News

On October 23rd, the Grand River Conservation Authority honoured individuals, families, organizations and businesses with Honour Roll Awards or Watershed Awards. Emil Frind, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Water Institute member, was awarded a 2014 Grand River Conservation Authority Watershed Award for his outstanding conservation and environmental work in the Grand River watershed.

In March 2014, the University of Waterloo and Technion Israel Institute of Technology signed a cooperation agreement to facilitate technology transfer and to provide commercialization opportunities to students and faculty in the areas of quantum information science, nanotechnology and water.

The Water Institute is pleased to announce that the AECOM Graduate Scholarship in Water Research and the Golder Associates Graduate Scholarship in Water Research are being offered this fall to graduate students conducting water research. Each scholarship is valued at $5,000. Only one application package is needed to be considered for both scholarships. 

The Centre for Advancement of Trenchless Technology (CATT) is pleased to publish the results of the first Canadian Buried Infrastructure Survey. The survey highlights the critical issues for municipal water, wastewater and storm water buried infrastructure. It also sheds light on the mechanisms that municipalities contemplate to address budgetary shortfalls. Furthermore, the customers’ satisfaction levels for trenchless service providers are reported.

There are graduate research opportunities (M.Sc. or Ph.D.) available for 2-3 excellent, highly motivated, student candidates interested in plot/hillslope/catchment field research on:
1. Erosional processes linking soil mobilization with sediment transport and fate in streams associated with forest harvesting activity including roads/linear disturbances in mountainous landscapes. 
2. Effects of forest harvestingon evaporatranspiration and soil moisture dynamics in mountain forest environments. 

Ric Soulis, Water Institute member and Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, was awarded a $140,000-two-year contract by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) to develop improved means of determining the hydrologic characteristics of a site. 

David Blowes, Water Institute member and Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has been awarded an NSERC CREATE grant in the amount of $1.65 million. The title of the NSERC CREATE is Training toward Environmentally Responsible Resource Extraction (TERRE).

The video taken of the June 18, 2014 Public Lecture by David Schindler is now available from the Water Institute's YouTube channel. The lecture was titled Canada's Freshwater in the 21st Century and is about one hour in duration.

​Sheree Pagsuyoin, Assistant Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering, was awarded $122,000 in funding from Grand Challenges Canada, Stars in Global Health (round 6). The project proposed by Pagsuyoin and her co-PIs J.R. Santos (George Washington University) and R.R.

Following submission of the Water Institute's Five-Year Review Report, the university's Senate Graduate and Research Council approved the Water Institute for another five year term at its May 2014 meeting.