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I first met George when I interviewed for a position as assistant professor in Systems Design Engineering in early 1976. His questions and comments at my interview seminar were a large part of my decision to join the department—here was a man with warmth, insight, creativity, and breadth. I soon came to realize that both my personal and professional life were to be shaped by George. He was the founding chair of the department. He was largely responsible for bringing the discipline of design into the curriculum for engineering, not just at Waterloo, but across Canada.

Systems Design Engineering alumnus Steve Carlisle (BASc 1986) is currently President and CEO of GM Canada.  He was recently interviewed regarding high tech / research hubs, one of which is planned for Kitchener-Waterloo. (The following article was originally published on Globe and Mail)

A longtime professor at Waterloo Engineering has added an appointment to the Order of Canada to his distinguished list of awards and accomplishments.

Systems Design Engineering PhD student Devinder Kumar and Professor Alexander Wong wins the Best Paper Award at the 31st Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2017) Transparent and interpretable Machine Learning in Safety Critical Environments Workshop for their work on explainable and interpretable AI for clinicial decision support: "CLEAR-DR: Interpretable Computer Aided Diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy".

Sisun Lee is a 2014 graduate from Systems Design Engineering.  In just three years he has worked at Facebook, Uber, Tesla, and has now created his own startup to cure hangovers, and selling more than $1 million in three months.  He describes his experience in his own words or the high-profile article from Business Insider.

Lifesavers: Diagnosis driven by artificial intelligence (AI)

Powered by AI at a fraction of the cost, new imaging technology can catch subtle signs of disease.

Today, doctors need a lot of judgement in order to detect cancer and heart disease on MRI, CT, and ultrasound scans. My research lab has developed technology that can catch subtle signs of cancer and heart disease from medical images that might otherwise be missed.

One University of Waterloo (UW) PhD candidate has developed an AI program he says shines a light into that black box—the "white box" method—revealing the inner workings of the AI and allowing us to better understand what the computer is learning, how it is analyzing data, and why decisions are made.[Read more]

New technology invented at the University of Waterloo is paving the way for artificial intelligence to break free of the Internet and cloud computing, offering a new means of portability.

Systems Design is pleased to recognize that Professor Igor Ivkovic was selected by the Engineering Society as the Fall 2017 term’s recipient of the Engineering Society Teaching Excellence Award.

The award recognizes an instructor (professors, lecturers, or laboratory instructors) for their contributions to ensuring academic success for their students. More specifically, the award recognizes an instructor who has: