And now, a message from the Canada Day celebration organizers: "For the past 29 years, the University of Waterloo has proudly welcomed our community to campus for the annual Canada Day Celebration. This year, 50,000 people joined the party. Thank-you to our students, faculty, staff and community for your continued support of the celebration. See you again next year."

(Was this really only a month ago?)

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$100,000 awarded at Venture Fund event

A wearable health monitor and music-making application were among four winners awarded $25,000 funding from the University of Waterloo VeloCity Venture Fund last Thursday in front of an audience of more than 250 people.

Blacktree Health and SoundBrush shared $100,000 in funding with Kite – a cloud-hosted web application development platform – and Planleaf – an email-based project management tool.

Blacktree Health is billed as the ultimate health monitor, while Soundbrush turns iPad drawings into music using a gesture-based control scheme. Kite is a cloud-hosted development platform for web apps and Planleaf is an email-based project management tool. Each team received $25,000 in funding after their pitches wowed a panel of judges.

They were the top competitors in an impressive array of student startups, including online collaborative trip planner GoPexo, Bitcoin currency exchange system LibertyBit, a "social mobile ordering platform that helps users discover and order what their friends are eating called Redro, a K-12 teacher workflow organizational tool called SesameIO, email consolidation tool Tessoll, and content generator Wriber, which makes it easy to write by providing suggestions as you type.

The VeloCity Venture Fund awards University of Waterloo students with $300,000 in grants each year and the opportunity to build their startups at the VeloCity Garage in downtown Kitchener.

At least one founder on a pitching team must be a current student of the University of Waterloo or a graduate of the University of Waterloo within the past year.

VeloCity Venture Fund finalists undergo a month-long qualification process. The ten finalists submitted their written proposals in early July; in mid-July presented a 20-minute pitch to a panel of independent judges from the Kitchener-Waterloo business community; and finally presented their three-minute pitches to a second panel of judges at the event on July 26.

“VeloCity runs an impressive program,” said Karamdeep Nijjar, venture capitalist at iNovia Capital and one of the judges at last Thursday's event. “When I graduated from Waterloo in 2006, going right into a startup after graduation was not a career option. VeloCity is giving a competitive and hungry group of entrepreneurs the opportunity to do just that and be very successful.”

Past winners of the Fund include Kitchener-Waterloo startup notables Thalmic Labs, makers of the MYO armband; WestonExpressions which this week started taking orders for their Linkett interactive digital signage system; BufferBox, North America’s first network of parcel pick-up stations; and MappedIn, who are transforming indoor mapping technology.

VeloCity also hosted a Demo Day earlier Thursday. Demo Days provide students with early-stage startup ideas the opportunity to pitch their business ideas for a chance at one of three $1000 grants. Experts from Waterloo’s Nanotechnology Engineering undergraduate program pitched their company Neverfrost – a sprayable transparent anti-frost coating for cars – which won two of the three grants for People’s Choice and Most Innovative. uwFlow, an online course planning website, won the best pitch award.

Demo Day winners are encouraged to apply for additional funding through the VeloCity Venture Fund competitions in future terms. VeloCity Venture Fund Finals take place three times a year and the program starts accepting submissions for the fall term competition in October.

For more information about the VeloCity Venture Fund, visit the VeloCity website.

A complete recording of the event is available online.

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Postdoc gets some northern exposure

by Bob Burtt. A longer version of this piece appears on Waterloo Stories.

A University of Waterloo scientist has won the prestigious Garfield Weston Postdoctoral Fellowship in Northern Research for the second year in a row.

Igor Lehnherr, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences focuses on the impact climate change is having on fresh water lakes and ponds in the Arctic.

“The award came at a time when I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to continue with my work in the north, where my true passion is,” said Lehnherr. “It is very important to study Arctic ecosystems right now, at time when they are rapidly changing”.

The research looks at how the lakes function and how they are being affected by global warming. His work helps scientists understand ecosystem productivity, which controls how much fish the lakes can support. The lake ecosystems are integral to the survival of Northern people who rely on fishing. Lehnherr also examines how melting glaciers and the loss of ice cover on the lakes affect the water quality of lakes and ponds.

The $50,000 award is a result of a partnership between the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (ACUNS) and the W. Garfield Weston Foundation.

Read the rest of the piece on Waterloo Stories.

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Quantum computing's tangled web

The Institute for Quantum Computing will welcome John Preskill (right), the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, to the University of Waterloo on Tuesday, August 6 at 7:00 p.m. in room 0101 in the Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre for a public lecture entitled "Quantum Computing and the Entanglement Frontier."

Preskill, a pioneer of quantum information, is known for winning a long-standing scientific wager with world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who conceded to Preskill’s prediction that information hidden behind a black hole can, in fact, be recovered and is not destroyed forever.

Through his public lecture, he will explain why he loves quantum entanglement – a property of quantum mechanics that people often find baffling. Dr. Preskill will share how quantum entanglement is being explored in quantum computing, where it will lead to applications in cryptology, materials science and medicine. 

Register online for this free event.

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Notes as the hay comes creaking to the barn

The Student Life Centre's Great Hall has been converted into study space for the remainder of the examination period. Tables and chairs are available.

Tickets are now on sale for the Reunion 2013 Alumni VIP tent at the Warriors football game that will take place on Warrior Field on September 28. The tent will feature beer sampling from Grand River Brewery, lunch from the West of Seoul food truck, and live entertainment. Tickets are $15. There is a limited number of VIP passes available, so register before they sell out.

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