News

The 2016 IEEE Conference on Electrical Insulation and Dielectric Phenomena (CEIDP 2016) was held October 16 to 19 at the Eaton Chelsea Hotel, Toronto, Canada. The number of attendees was 248, including 18 walk-in registrants, a record for CEIDP. A total of 259 papers were accepted, an acceptance rate of about 80%. The contributions were from 27 countries, representing academia, government, and industry. CEIDP provided financial support to 20 research students, who presented their research and participated in discussions. The total number of registered students was 94.

University of Waterloo technologies and research continue to revolutionize the development of greenhouse gas reduction, contributing to innovative solutions applicable to a variety of industrial sectors. This event provided an opportunity to connect with Waterloo’s research expertise and technologies and explore opportunities for collaboration in the areas of industrial greenhouse gas emission reduction. In particular, this event focused on connecting industry and researchers with interest in the following three categories:

1. Industrial Point Source
2. Value Chain
3. CO₂ Innovations

An overview of potential funding opportunities through Ontario Centres of Excellence and NSERC were also presented.

Research Spotlight: Making Microgrids More Stable

The Development Impact Lab (DIL), headquartered at UC Berkeley and funded by USAID, has developed a new approach to innovation in the context of global development. The approach – called “Development Engineering (Dev Eng)”–merges advances in engineering with insights from the behavioural and social sciences. In addition to providing a robust, interdisciplinary framework for designing and testing new technologies in the field, DIL encourages researchers to build scale into the R&D process, from the beginning.

Yet the precise barriers to scale are often ill-defined. There are few generalizable mechanisms for scaling evidence-based interventions in emerging markets. To learn from ongoing efforts, DIL hosted their annual State of the Science conference on "The Science of Scaling".

The conference brought together academic researchers, development practitioners, technology developers, and investors to review the evidence on scaling successful anti-poverty innovations–particularly those developed at universities. Are there proven methods for technology transfer from universities to government agencies and non-governmental organizations? Why do some products and interventions scale quicker than others? What facilitates the adoption of new technologies by end-users? This event explored these questions and helped articulate a research agenda for the “Science of Scaling”.

The international character of this conference and exhibition brought together academia, practitioners, industry and development institutions with the aim of sharing experiences and the latest technology developments, learning from each other and networking.

The objective of the event was to :

• Consolidate the knowledge around solutions that have proven to work and their enabling factors,
• Present different models of financing, business models and technologies that enable the fast uptake of such solutions and
• Provide new roads for research and innovation;

The 10th Toronto Global Forum (TGF) took place from September 12–14, 2016 in Toronto, Canada. The forum's theme was "Leading in uncertain times".

Executive Director WISE, Dr. Jatin Nathwani participated in the event. 

In consideration of his achievements in low-carbon development and reputation, Dr. Roydon Fraser was invited to the Taiyuan Energy Low-Carbon Development Forum 2016. Prof. Roydon Fraser, was invited to present his research relating to low-carbon energy development and the applications in the area of transportation. Prof. Fraser also presented the role and vision of WISE to help transform our energy future through partnership.

The forum was jointly sponsored by the People's Government of Shanxi Province, the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China and National Energy Administration and was held from Sept 7^th to 9^th, 2016 in Taiyuan, Shanxi, China.

A Critical Look at Resource Criticality Assessments