Waterloo Quality
Innovative
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Supplanting silicon with organic electronics
While silicon has long been the mainstay of the electronics industry, the tide may be turning in favour of organic electronics, using molecules made of carbon and hydrogen to replace silicon.
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The next big (very small) thing
The most sophisticated building on Waterloo’s main campus will be, appropriately, a crucible for research in areas of knowledge predicted to shape the 21st century: quantum information and nanotechnology. Quantum information exploits the behaviour of matter at the level of the atom, where classical laws of physics do not apply.
Unconventional
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A positive look at sex, marriage, and family
In all Canada there is nothing like St. Jerome’s University’s Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies (SMF) program. “There are many family studies programs, and a handful of sexuality programs, usually not majors,” says Lara Vlach, president of the newly formed SMF Student Society. “But there is no other undergrad degree program that combines these areas.”
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The cure for global warming by architecture
Terri Meyer Boake admits her ambitions are lofty: “I’m trying to save the world, one architecture student at a time.” For the School of Architecture professor, “research arises from a problem; it’s problem solving.” She sees global warming as the pre-eminent problem of our time, one in which architects are implicated: “Buildings produce 40 to 70 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide.”
Collaborative
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Enabling nutritious choices
It’s not good news: Canada’s young people are overweight, and the chief culprits are poor eating habits and lack of exercise. Obesity is a particular problem among First Nations youth, putting them at increased risk for diabetes and heart disease. Professors Rhona Hanning, health studies and gerontology, and Len Tsuji, environment and resource studies, with PhD candidate Kelly Skinner and other graduate students, are working to understand the complexities of this challenge.
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Healthy populations combat disease
“I’ve got the best job in the world,” says Roy Cameron, a professor in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences and executive director of the new Propel Centre for Population Health Impact at UW. “It’s the perfect job for someone like me, whose passion is making a difference in the world.”
Connected
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Enterprising partners
Looking like a big metal bug with one inquisitive eye, the NASA Mars Rover Spirit rolls across a dusty red desert under a pink sky. A Pancam on top of Spirit’s mast swivels this way and that, snapping spectacular, finely detailed pictures of the Martian landscape. Inside the camera, critical to the quality of those photos, is an image sensor called a charged coupled device (CCD). The CCDs in the Pancam and in Spirit’s other eight cameras were fabricated by DALSA Corp.
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Minds meeting around the world
Jiali Wang got her start as a Waterloo student half a world away, at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics (NUFE). Among the first students enrolled in the joint NUFE-Waterloo undergraduate program in environment and business in 2007, Jiali spent her first two years studying in China. She’s now completing her degree in Canada. The program, directed by environment professor Steven Young (pictured with Jiali), is the first of its kind in Canada — and in China.
Creative
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Carving a niche with creativity
“I’ve always been interested in creative activity, how it is organized through space and changes with time,” says geography and environmental management professor Tara Vinodrai, who holds a cross-appointment to the Centre for Environment and Business.
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Expanded brain space straight ahead
Spring, 2009: Alex Berlin, team leader for the University of Waterloo's Formula SAE team, wants more space. A lot more. And soon. The team's room in the Engineering 3 building is crammed with computers, tools, old seat moulds, books, magazines — and one or two older cars. The team builds a new car each year, and each day, an older model gets rolled out into the hallway.
Risk-Taking
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Co-op education: a bold choice
Since 1957, co-operative education has been the University of Waterloo’s calling card: Waterloo was the first co-op program for university students in Canada. It’s now the largest post-secondary program in the world, with more than 13,500 students enrolled over three semesters.
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Waterloo’s greenest faculty
When Waterloo’s Senate approved the new Division of Environmental Studies — soon to be called the Faculty of Environmental Studies — in 1969, they were sticking their necks out. They’d created an oasis of environmental awareness at a time when “going green” was just trickling into the mainstream. For years, Canada’s only undergrad environmental studies program was Waterloo’s.
Courageous
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No smooth path
Yan Li is having an excellent year. As co-ordinator of the Chinese language program at Renison University College, she celebrates her students’ achievements. For the third year running, Waterloo students won first place in the Ontario University Students Chinese contest held at Renison in April. Not surprisingly, Li received the Outstanding Overseas Chinese Teachers Award from the Chinese Culture and Education Society of Canada in 2009.
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Opening doors, clearing roads
When Kate Hano first came to Waterloo in 1997, the road between frosh week and convocation looked challenging. The vision-impaired student admits she didn’t make things easy for herself, choosing a double major in psychology and sociology, and throwing herself into volunteer activities on and off campus.
Critical Thinking
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Calculations take flight
Applied mathematicians like Lilia Krivodonova use computers to tackle scientific problems that have proved impossible to solve for more than 100 years. “Most equations of practical interest can’t be solved exactly,” she says. “It’s not only too difficult, but theoretically impossible. When we build or compute something, it’s never exact. There’s always some error.”
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Unlocking the laws of brainpower
“It will be more than a lifetime’s work,” says Chris Eliasmith, director of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience (CTN). He’s referring to his research goal: to understand the brain through the lens of mathematics. Theoretical neuroscience (also known as computational neuroscience) brings together researchers from many different disciplines to tackle one of the most complex systems we know — the human brain and nervous system.
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