President invites questions at town hall

Waterloo’s president — now “fully installed”, as he joked at a board of governors meeting last week following installation ceremonies at Convocation on October 22 — will meet the campus this afternoon in a town hall meeting.

The event will start at 3 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre and is scheduled to run about an hour and a half. Unlike previous town halls, which were focused on employees of the university, this one is open to students, staff and faculty, and invitations went by e-mail to all three groups.

It’ll also be webcast, for the benefit of those at the university’s satellite campuses (Kitchener, Cambridge, Stratford, Dubai) and others who, for whatever reason, just can’t attend in person.

President Feridun Hamdullahpur is expected to speak for the first 20 to 30 minutes of today’s event, giving the university a quick briefing on some of his priority issues as well as a rundown of recent achievements and successes. Among the things he’ll likely mention are the planned seniors’ residence on the north campus, which will be a major laboratory for research on aging; new buildings opening this fall; the work of the new student success office; the hiring process for vacant senior positions; budgeting; national and international rankings; and the university’s growing links with India and China. (Hamdullahpur will be airborne tomorrow, starting an Asian visit that will include the official opening of the university’s office in Hong Kong.)

The president will also say something about the “mid-cycle review” of the Sixth Decade Plan, a project that has taken many hours of his time this fall in dozens of consultations with groups of students, faculty and staff. An online survey is also under way.

After Hamdullahpur’s report from the stage of Humanities, he’ll open the floor for questions. (There was no attempt to collect questions in advance, as was done for several previous town hall events.) People present in the theatre can ask their questions orally, and those watching the webcast can send them by e-mail to townhall@ uwaterloo.ca. The president will either answer the questions himself, or refer them to one of the vice-presidents and other senior staff who will be on hand.

Says an invitation letter asking people to attend: “These student, faculty and staff meetings allow us to come together and celebrate our university's achievements, talk about our progress on key strategic priorities, challenges and opportunities, and provide answers to questions put forward by the campus community.

“Our goal is to have an informal, engaging and two-way conversation that involves the entire Waterloo community.”

Back to top

Peace, man, peace and love: that was the theme yesterday at the engineering undergraduate office in Carl Pollock Hall. It's back to the 21st century today, though, after a quick Hallowe'en trip to the 1960s. The two-finger V sign is a tricky thing, but when there are guitars and granny glasses in the frame, it pretty definitely means "peace".

Back to top

Nano grad student works on 'wearable' kidney

A graduate student in systems design engineering has received a major award for his research on creating a “Nanotechnology-Based Wearable Artificial Kidney”, a national agency that funds high-level training for kidney researchers has announced.

Morteza Ahmadi, whose previous training was at the University of Lethbridge, is based in SDE’s advanced micro-nano devices lab. He is receiving the “Allied Health Doctoral Award” from Krescent, the Kidney Research Scientist Core Education and National Training Program, which is a joint venture of the Kidney Foundation of Canada, the Canadian Society of Nephrology, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. “It is one of only two awarded in Canada for 2011,” says his supervisor, John Yeow, “and I believe this is also the first at UW.”

Says a citation from Krescent: “Kidney failure has been a major health problem around the world. Increasing the number of patients and lacking the number of transplants are two main issues. Dialysis technologies continue to play an important role in health care delivery over 65 years. In average, patients having renal failure are required to visit a dialysis centre for 4-6 hours, 3 times per week to remove toxins and waste from their blood.

“A compact and reliable wearable artificial kidney that can be carried by the patient 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, will possibly change the quality of the lives of such patients and will assist them to have a normal life.”

It quotes Ahmadi’s description of the work he’s doing: “This research project is focused on the design, fabrication and characterization of a compact wearable artificial kidney based on nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the science of making tiny structures as small as atoms and molecules.

“With advances in nanotechnology, membranes with precise pore size have been produced. We employ such membranes in our wearable kidney to filter out molecules of toxins and waste from blood more efficiently. Results of this research project may have a great impact on the lives of patients who depend on dialysis.”

Back to top

Notes and news in nebulous November

The marketing and undergraduate recruitment office held its annual breakfast gathering for high school guidance counsellors on Thursday at the University Club, with about 60 people attending. “Not only were counsellors present from our local schools (Waterloo area, Guelph, Cambridge),” says Tina Roberts, director of MUR, “we had counsellors from the Toronto area, including Mississauga, Milton, Markham and a counsellor from British Columbia —- she was even able to connect with one of her former students who is in our mechatronics program. 'Ideas start here' was the theme of the event, and we highlighted our new Global Business and Digital Arts program, the Student Success Office, and the Environment 3 building going for LEED Platinum certification. Nancy Weiner gave our popular ‘Navigating the University Admissions Process for your Students’ talk, a student panel answered questions, and Kim McKee highlighted the resources available to counsellors. The event also benefits from the participation of our faculty, school, and university college colleagues and our student support offices who host our counsellor tables.”

Enrolment at the United Arab Emirates campus is continuing to grow, registrar Ken Lavigne told the university's board of governors last week. He said there are 102 first-year students at the Dubai establishment this fall — hey, that's more, in the campus's third year of operation, that the Waterloo campus itself had when it launched classes in 1957. Second-year enrolment is now 47. That's as far as the Dubai curriculum goes; after two years, students transfer to the main Waterloo campus to complete their studies. That will be happening for the first time a few weeks from now, Lavigne said, with 13 students due to arrive in January to enter classes in term 3A.

Also at last week's board of governors meeting, vice-president (university research) George Dixon gave a briefing on some of the grants and other funding that have come to Waterloo lately, and some that are being applied for. The Canada Foundation for Innovation is about to make a sizeable round of grants, he said, with an "envelope" for Waterloo tentatively estimated at $13 million. The total projects that are ready to go from this university would need more like $33 million, Dixon added. Getting the CFI money is only half the battle: typically the federal agency provides 40 per cent of the cost of a project, the Ontario government matches that, and the final 20 per cent comes from industrial partners or other sources that the university has to find.

First it was the Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology. Then, with the announcement eighteen months ago of a major gift from local philanthropist Manfred Conrad, it became the Conrad Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology. And now, says CBET communicator Alison Gelata, it's the Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology Centre. "I'm trying to continually clarify," she writes, "since there's been some confusion." CBET, which operates the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology program for the faculty of engineering, has its offices in the Accelerator building on Hagey Boulevard.

The "summer" issue of Phys 13 News, published by Waterloo's physics and astronomy department for high school science teachers, has just appeared, and is devoted largely to the theme of "Women in Physics". Among the articles: a report on a conference on that topic hosted in July by the Perimeter Institute and the university's Institute for Quantum Computing. "The banquet ended on a high," writes postdoc Sarah Croke of the IQC, "with one participant how emotionally sharing how difficult it had been for her to return to her studies after a five-year break following the birth of her daughter, and explaining what a huge impact the conference had on her."

Hillel, the program centre for Jewish students at Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, is marking Holocaust Education Week with several events over the next few days. A silent memorial march is planned for today: "All volunteers will wear black, meet at the Hillel house at 11:30 a.m., and we will walk together through UW campus and Laurier campus. The march will end at the Laurier quad where you have the option to say a few words, a poem, story, or anything that means something to you. This is an opportunity to march in memory of someone who was in the war, whether it be a relative, historical figure, survivor, or someone you have read about whose story had an impact on you."

CAR

Back to top