Current students

This summer, a new collaboration will bring together members of the University of Waterloo and members of Six Nations to share a journey along the Grand River. Two Row by the Grandis a five-day, reconciliation-focused bicycle tour following the river from Cambridge to Port Maitland, taking place July 15 to 19, 2026, alongside the annual Two Row on the Grand, a paddling event that brings together over 75 participants over 10 days each July.

Ocean conservation efforts are often guided by ambitious global targets, from protecting 30 per cent of marine and coastal areas to advancing the United Nations Ocean Decade goals. But new thinking co-authored by Water Institute member Derek Armitage and published in The Conversation argues that targets alone are not enough to ensure meaningful progress.

Every year, the Waterloo Wellington Children's Groundwater Festival helps hundreds of elementary school students discover the hidden world of groundwater and the importance of protecting our water resources. This year, members of the Society of the Water Institute Graduate Students (SWIGS) helped bring those lessons to life through a new four-part educational video series created for the festival’s virtual programming.

Dr. Nandita Basu delivered a distinguished public lecture at the University of Victoria, highlighting integrated pathways to water, food, and energy sustainability through the SOLUTIONSCAPES framework. Her talk emphasized that while many effective environmental solutions already exist, their impact depends on coordinated, landscape-scale implementation that accounts for real-world complexity. The lecture also marked her recognition with the Distinguished Women Scholars Award.

The Microplastics Fingerprinting research project has released their latest impact report. This report showcases the remarkable scientific advancements and societal contributions our researchers have made since the microplastics fingerprinting research group's launch.

As part of the Collaborative Water Program’s WATER 601 course, student teams delivered final presentations featuring integrated water management solutions to complex water challenges, sharing their ideas with a panel of experts from the University of Waterloo and the Canada Water Agency (CWA). The exercise goes beyond a typical class assignment. It asks students to think across disciplines, weigh ecological, social and economic trade-offs and deliver practical recommendations that could inform real policy and practice.

A new study led by Water Institute researcher Mark Servos and colleagues in the Servos Group has detected antidepressants, opioids and other drugs of abuse accumulating in freshwater fish living downstream of urban wastewater treatment plants. Using a newly developed analytical method, the team found compounds such as fentanyl, methadone and venlafaxine in multiple wild fish species, marking the first documentation of these substances in wild fish in Canada.

Peatlands cover upwards of 12 per cent of Canada’s landscape and store more carbon than all other ecosystems in the country combined, making them one of Canada’s most powerful natural climate allies. Yet until now, information on these critical ecosystems has been difficult to find. To address this gap, the Can-Peat Network at the University of Waterloo launched the Canadian Peatland Data Portal in early January, the country’s first national platform dedicated to centralizing peatland carbon metadata.