News

Prithula Prosun, a recent graduate of Waterloo’s School of Architecture, has won a Canadian Architect Student Award of Merit for her master’s thesis project Lift House that provides flood-proof housing for the Bangladeshi poor. Prosun developed a house that rises with flood waters and then lowers once flooding recedes. In October, Prosun’s project was honoured by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for applying leading-edge research to real-world situations. 

Chemical engineering professor Flora Ng has won the 2011 Hikal Chemcon Distinguished Speaker Award. She will be presented with the award at CHEMCON, the annual conference of the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, to be held in Bangalore, India December 27-29. This year’s conference theme is Chemical Engineering in Synergistic Growth. Ng will deliver her award lecture on Catalytic Distillation: Applications for the Production of Green Fuel and Chemicals.

Engineering 5, designed by Perkins+Will of Toronto, has won a 2011 Global Excellence Award Best of Category in the Cultural/Institutional/Educational Category, by the International Interior Design Association (IIDA). Winners of the competition were chosen from 92 international design firms from 32 countries judged on representation of outstanding originality, and excellence in the creation of international interior design and architecture projects. Awards will be presented at the Maison & Objet Show in Paris in mid January.

Jackie Rehkopf, who graduated from civil engineering with both her BASc and PhD, has had her book “Automotive Carbon Fiber Composites: From Evolution to Implementation” published by SAE International. Rehkopf is a senior researcher at Plasan Carbon Composites, a Tier 1 producer of carbon fiber composites for the U.S. automotive industry. She is also a principal investigator of a three-year project on predictive modeling of carbon fiber composites in automotive crash applications.

Stephen Teeple, a School of Architecture graduate, is piloting an award-winning architecture firm called Teeple Architects, which specializes in a broad range of institutional, commercial and residential projects, including community and recreation centres, libraries, schools and university buildings. The current mix includes The Stephen Hawking Centre (a major expansion of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo) where Mr.

Geoff Christou (BArch ’10) has teamed up with a childhood friend to create Our Paper Life, a company that sells an environmentally-friendly shelf and a desk made from paper. The adult-size desk and shelf, each costing $19.99, are ideal for university students because they can be easily assembled and recycled when they’re no longer needed.

Zero emissions, no noise was the promise of the ZENN Low Speed Vehicle (LSV), produced by the ZENN Motor Company of Toronto between 2006 and 2010. A rare pre-production model is on display to the public in the Engineering 5 lobby until mid-January. It was brought to the university by Mehrdad Kazerani, a Waterloo professor of electrical and computer engineering, whose research team will be using the vehicle after the exhibition ends. The ZENN is a fully functional, two passenger, front wheel drive, electric vehicle that was produced at an assembly plant in Saint-Jerome, Quebec.

Lola Sheppard, a Waterloo School of Architecture professor, is concerned with how processed foods are threatening hunting traditions and the health of Inuit people in Canada’s North. Sheppard and her partner, Mason White, recently won a $100,000 Holcim Award for an infrastructure project they developed that seeks to reaffirm hunting and fishing traditions among the people of Baffin Island in the territory of Nunavut. The project’s goal is to create a network of shelters along snowmobile paths connecting 11,000 people who live in disconnected communities across Baffin Island.