Engineering Headlines

Tewodros Mamo, a fourth-year Waterloo nanotechnology engineering student, has been honoured as engineering’s top co-op student of the year, one of six campus-wide winners. The first co-op student to be hired by Harvard Medical School Mamo was involved in designing targeted nanoparticle systems for gene and drug delivery. He and his team produced results showing that nanoparticles have great promise in the therapeutic treatment of diseases including cancer. As a result of Mamo’s two successful work terms, Harvard is hiring eight more co-op students. [news release]

Micaala Seth, a second year chemical engineering student, recently won the gold medal at the Canadian University Squash Championships which qualifies her to play in this summer’s world university squash championships. Seth will represent both the University of Waterloo and Canada at the championship to be held in Australia July 10 to 18, 2010.

Rick Culham, Waterloo Engineering’s associate dean of research and external partnerships, was recently honoured as a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Culham, a mechanical and mechatronics engineering professor, has also been appointed to a term as a University Research Chair, which recognizes “exceptional achievement and pre-eminence in a particular field of knowledge.”

Sarah Legg, a Waterloo environmental engineering student, was recently awarded the Leaders for the Future award by the Ontario Professional Engineers Foundation for Education. She was honoured for her essay on being a globally minded engineer. A member of the university’s Engineers Without Borders chapter, Legg is volunteering overseas for the organization this summer.

Engineering researchers have been awarded $11.4 million from the Ontario Research Fund for three Waterloo-based projects. The project teams are headed by Raafat Mansour and Guang Gong, both of electrical and computer engineering, and Amir Khajepour of mechanical and mechatronics engineering. Mansour’s project will use new engineering developments to create the next generation of nano devices; Gong’s will develop security solutions for ad hoc communication and embedded systems; and Khajepour’s will research the green transportation paradigm. Funding of over $20 million was announced at Waterloo for six campus-wide projects. [DB article]

Matthew Stevens, a Waterloo chemical engineering doctoral candidate, is one of The Waterloo Region Record’s 40 Under 40 for 2010. Stevens, a former captain of Waterloo’s alternative fuels team, is chief executive officer of CrossChasm Technologies. The company he founded with Waterloo Engineering classmates works to accelerate the design of next-generation vehicles. Stevens, 29, is one of 11 with University of Waterloo ties to be honoured by the paper this year.

Jim Ostrowski, a post-doctoral management sciences student, finished second in the Nicholson Student Paper Competition, an annual contest to honor outstanding student papers in the field of operations research and the management sciences. Ostrowski’s paper was entitled Orbital Branching. [contest website]

Siva Sivoththaman, a Waterloo electrical and computer engineering professor, has been appointed the Ontario Research Chair in Renewable Energy Technologies. Sivoththaman’s research program will develop technical approaches and provide guidelines in setting standards to ensure health and safety in the manufacturing, use, and end-of-life phases of renewable energy technologies. Sivoththaman’s appointment was one of three Ontario Research Chairs in environmental science announced recently. [news release]

Hiren Patel of electrical and computer engineering won top honours in the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference for a paper he co-authored entitled SCGPSim: A Fast SystemC Simulator on GPUs. The conference, considered one of the premier events in design automation, was held recently in Taiwan. [conference website]

While medical help, food aid and clean water are essential, the next most important thing Haitians could use would be a building code that works, Siriram Narasimhan, a Waterloo professor of civil and environmental engineering said in an interview with the Waterloo Region Record. Without one, Narasimhan said, Haiti is likely to rebuild the same type of structures that led to thousands of deaths in January’s earthquake. [Record article]