Alumnus receives Canada's highest Remote Sensing honour

From the Faculty of Environment

When University of Waterloo alumnus Dr. Robert “Bob” Ryerson stepped up to the podium to accept the 2012 Canadian Remote Sensing Society (CRSS) Gold Medal Award for his “pioneering contributions and leadership” he promised to keep his speech to 15 minutes. With so many accomplishments and so many people to thank, it wasn’t easy.

Since earning his PhD in Geography from the Faculty of Environmental Studies in 1975 he has helped elevate the importance of remote sensing here in Canada and around the world.

For the unfamiliar, remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon, without making physical contact with the object.

Read more about Remote Sensing and Dr. Ryerson's achievement over at the Faculty of Environment website.

 

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Waterloo researcher wins major grant from Canadian Cancer Society

An abridged news release from the Canadian Cancer Society.

The Canadian Cancer Society has granted new funding to a Waterloo scientist to research an innovative fresh approach to cancer treatment.

Photodynamic therapy is a new technology that uses a combination of light and light-sensitive drugs to kill cancer cells. While it is currently used to treat some types of cancer, there are limitations that prevent more widespread use of this therapy, such as the ability of light to reach tumours deep inside the body.

Dr Qing-Bin Lu of the University of Waterloo has been granted nearly $200,000 for an innovative approach aimed to improve this therapy. He will examine the use of a novel light-controlled agent in combination with low doses of a currently used cancer drug called cisplatin. The interaction between these two therapies has only recently been discovered and has not yet been explored in great detail.

 

By applying this new approach, photodynamic therapy could become a more wide-spread treatment option in clinical practice, especially for those cancers that are currently hard to treat with this therapy.

 

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