Drops in the daily deluge of news

Cleanup work is continuing this week on the third floor of Engineering III building, where a burst pipe did extensive water damage on New Year's Eve, mostly affecting offices in the systems design engineering department. "It's cleaning up pretty well so far," says Don Haffner of the plant operations department, who is overseeing the work, being done by a specialized cleanup contractor. He said the largest part of the job involves removing and replacing drywall from floor level upward about two feet (60 cm). A couple of research laboratories were affected as well as faculty offices, but "the student impact is minimal," Haffner said. The damage happened when a sprinkler line froze and burst in the area where walls had been removed for the bridge connection to the new Engineering 5 building.

Late-night information sessions in UW’s residences, providing the scoop about housing for upper-year students, start tonight and continue on six other nights. “You will learn about upper-year housing and receive the resources necessary to make the right choice for where you’d like to live,” organizers promise. Most of the sessions start at 10 p.m. Tonight there are two: one in the Village I great hall (aimed primarily at first-year students now living in the V1 east quad or in Renison University College) and one in the Beck Hall Community Centre at UW Place (aimed primarily at first-year students in UWP’s Eby Hall). For those whose upper-year choice is a UW residence next fall term, applications are available as of 9:00 this morning. “Please note,” says the housing web site, “that we only have 4-stream (fall-spring) spaces available. UW guarantees residence to first-year students, which limits the number of spaces available to upper-year students for the fall term. 4-stream students returning to school in the winter and spring terms allow us to keep residence and food service facilities in operation year round.” Rooms are also available for the 2010 spring term, and indeed the housing web site reveals that some rooms are available for the winter term that’s already under way.

The January issue of the ACR Bulletin, published by the American College of Radiology, has a feature article about a UW spinoff company that has developed a new kind of software for processing medical images. The firm, Segasist, was called OMISA Inc. when it was featured in the Daily Bulletin a year ago. UW itself is a major shareholder. Says the magazine: “Hamid Tizhoosh, Ph.D., and his colleagues at the University of Waterloo, realized that one of the most pressing challenges facing radiologists, who have come to rely on CAD as an adjunct aid to their work, is that there was not a program that could accurately review and interpret medical images like a human can. ‘That,’ he notes, ‘was the motivation leading to what has become the Segasist software.’ According to Tizhoosh, who serves as chief technology officer for Segasist Technologies, the software’s parent company, the new product ‘closes the loop’ between clinician and software. Every time the result of a contour is either accepted or corrected by a clinician, the software learns a bit more about how to delineate accurately. ‘Thinking like a doctor in this context means delineating like a doctor,’ Tizhoosh explains.”

A dozen students from UW and the University of Victoria will be off to do a work term in Austria or Germany with $4,500 to help cover their costs, the department of co-op and career services has announced. “This will come about,” a memo says, “thanks to CANEU COOP, a partnership program supported by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. The EU counterparts will send their students to Canada for academic terms. The project includes a collaborative research component that will identify the global competencies developed by the Canadian and EU students who will be twinned during their international experiences.” Says Peggy Jarvie, head of the co-op department: “We are extremely grateful to HRSDC for recognizing not only the value of the research to be undertaken by this project, but also the significant positive impact that a foreign work opportunity can offer students. The collaboration of the University of Victoria, the University of Waterloo, and the two European universities is a testament to what can be achieved by working together.” The grant, which will stretch over a two-year period, is one of eight awards distributed to Canadian institutions as part of HRSDC’s Transatlantic Exchange Program.

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KI student comments on his scholarship

from “We’re Making the Future”, a report on UW donors, achievements and plans published late in 2009

"Receiving a President's Scholarship validated my decision to come to Waterloo," says Eric Kennedy. Entering the first class of the Faculty of Environment's unconventional Bachelor of Knowledge Integration (BKI) program with an admission average above 95 per cent, Kennedy (right) received a President's Scholarship of Distinction. The prestigious award consists of a $2,000 entrance scholarship plus a $1,500 award to fund international experience or research.

Kennedy was grateful for the help with his tuition fees and thrilled with the additional support for experiential learning.

"It's neat that a scholarship supports going beyond what you do in the classroom." He plans to use the money to help pay for a trip to Amsterdam with his BKI class.

Working with curators in museums and galleries in that city, Kennedy and his class will "explore museums as a collaborative problem-solving exercise, research that will be used toward the BKI third-year museum project." That project involves small groups of students designing a museum exhibit on a transdisciplinary topic of their choice, culminating in public talks and an exhibition of the projects.

While Kennedy is still pondering how he will use the research portion of the funds — "perhaps in a think-tank approach to public service" — he appreciates that his scholarship supports these kinds of out-of-classroom experiences that build the foundation for lifelong learning.

Kennedy has come to see these experiences as an invaluable part of a university education, "as a way to help solve the really perplexing problems in the world. It's where many solutions, many good directions come from."

He commends the university for its vision in establishing such an award. "It takes courage for a university to say it recognizes the intrinsic value of experience."

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How 8 profs are spending their sabbaticals

Several faculty members are currently in the midst of sabbatical leaves that began November 1, 2009. Here are their plans for the sabbaticals, as reported to the UW board of governors, which has to give approval for all faculty leaves:

Michael Rubinstein, pure mathematics (six months): “I plan to take a half-year sabbatical to focus my research efforts on a large scale NSF funded ($1,200,000 USD) group project that I am directing. Some of this research will be carried out at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where I have been offered membership during the upcoming academic year.”

Robert Varin, mechanical and mechatronics engineering (six months): “I will spend the sabbatical leave at UW working in my laboratory on the development of novel nanostructured materials for solid state hydrogen storage. This research is supported by the NSERC Hydrogen Canada Strategic Research Network.”

James Bookbinder, management sciences (twelve months): “I intend to edit a book entitled Global Logistics. Each chapter would be commissioned from particular authors of my choice. That will enable a coherent volume, emphasizing important issues of international supply chains in various regions of the world, and the transportation flows that connect them.”

Olga Vechtomova, management sciences (six months): “I plan to spend my sabbatical leave at Microsoft Research Cambridge. My proposed research is aimed at developing techniques for complex question answering. My first objective is to identify features for predicting the type of semantic relation between concepts. The second objective is to develop a weighting scheme for text nuggets containing semantic relations expressed in the query.”

And here are some of the faculty members whose sabbatical leaves — all six months long — began as of January 1:

Judie Cukier, geography and environmental management: “My sabbatical will be partially spent conducting field research on a SSHRC-funded project entitled Sustaining Livelihoods: Handicrafts and Tourism in Cuba, and to publish results based on this project. I will also be producing a series of documentary films on environment and tourism in Cuba. Finally, I will apply for new funding to support research on parks and protected areas in the Dominican Republic.”

Thomas Edwards, earth and environmental sciences: “I will be a Visiting Scientist at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland. I will engage in collaborative research with Dr. Thomas Stocker and other members of the OCCCR and contribute to the activities of Working Group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is co-chaired by Prof. Stocker.”

Jonathan Fugelsang, psychology: “I will devote the majority of time collaborating with colleagues (e.g., Daniel Ansari, Western) on ongoing research projects, and writing up this research for publication. I also plan o visit the laboratories of Claude Alain (U of T) and Todd Handy (UBC) to acquire more expertise in Event Related Potential brain imaging to facilitate the development of an ERP laboratory at Waterloo.”

Mario Gauthier, chemistry: “Catch-up work to submit new manuscripts, visits abroad to initiate collaborations.”

CAR

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