Campaigns, connections, and community

First and foremost, congratulations to our entire campus on our successful United Way Campaign!

Let me extend a big thank you to all of those who organized and donated to this excellent cause. As I mentioned in my message to campus on Thursday, we surpassed our fundraising goal of $240,000, which represents about 5 per cent of United Way’s fundraising goal for the entire region of Waterloo.

Like you, I am extremely proud of this excellent contribution we’ve made to our community. Congratulations to each and every one of you who contributed. 

Our engagement with the broader community is based on our excellence and engagement here on campus, and to that end, yesterday I was delighted to host our fall-term Town Hall with Provost Geoff McBoyle.

Those of you in attendance or who viewed on webcast will already know that we discussed the implementation of the Strategic Plan, and how that process will look over the next several months. Thank you to all of you who participated in the Town Hall either as organizers, or audience members.

On Wednesday the 20^th of November, I was very pleased to host the “Towards Sustainable Partnerships: Canada’s Aboriginal Communities and the Resources Sector” summit with the University of Waterloo School of Environment.

This conference brought together aboriginal, political, and business leaders in Canada to discuss the challenges and opportunities of sustainable resource development as it pertains to the rights of Canada’s indigenous peoples. Former prime minister Paul Martin and former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, helped to lead the discussion. Thank you to SEED for facilitating such a positive event that beautifully showcased the University of Waterloo’s impact and leadership across the full spectrum of society.

Our group of eminent guests in November did not end with the SEED conference, however. The university welcomed Dr. Peretz Lavie, President of Israel’s Technion University, to campus on November 12. President Lavie gave an excellent overview about the history and strengths of the Technion during his guest lecture at the Accelerator Centre. I was delighted with his repeated comments about Technion’s many similarities to Waterloo, and about our two universities being on the leading edge of university innovation.

Our next special guest lecture promises to be outstanding, as well. On December 3, Colonel Chris Hadfield will be on campus to deliver a guest lecture and make himself available for a book signing. Details are available on our events page. As you know, Colonel Hadfield has been appointed Adjunct Professor of Aviation at the University of Waterloo, and we are extremely proud that he’s joining our outstanding professoriate. I look forward to welcoming him to campus on a more permanent basis when he takes up his post in the Fall of 2014.

Outside the university, my administration and I continue to fully engage with our fellow stakeholders in the post-secondary education community to make progress on issues including differentiation, funding formulae, and at the federal level, on research funding. This month I led a small delegation from the University of Waterloo to Queen’s Park in Toronto, where we had substantive conversations with Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) officials on a wide-range of issues. Thanks to members of our Board of Governors for participating in Waterloo’s advocacy efforts across these and other areas.

With the holidays fast approaching, I hope you are all looking forward to relaxing with family and friends over the Christmas season. As the university will be closed the last Friday of December, my end-of-month article will not be published.

I look forward to picking up these monthly updates in January, and I wish each and every one of you a happy and healthy holiday season and a wonderful new year!

Sincerely,

Feridun

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VeloCity Fund winners named

A company that will help parents get their kids interested in computer programming at a young age was among the winners yesterday as more than 400 people looked on at the eighth VeloCity Fund Finals.

Ten startups competed for one of four grants worth $25,000 and the opportunity to build their businesses at the VeloCity Garage. The four winners of the grants are:

• Light-bot,which gets kids interested in computer science by playing games.
• MetricWire, which accelerates groundbreaking academic research by making it easy to collect rich scientific data via smartphones.
• uMentioned, a college location-based app that lets you anonymously chat and make new friends with people nearby.
• PiinPoint, which uses demographic, real estate, traffic and municipal data to identify optimal new store locations for retailers.

"I'm ecstatic. $25,000, no equity," said Danny Yaroslavski, the founder of Light-bot. "The funds will go directly into hiring developers and getting Light-bot into schools as quickly as possible."

MetricWire, which provides a solution for researchers to be able to collect data for their studies using mobile devices instead of paper, also came away a winner.

"I'm just so happy right now," said Brian Stewart of MetricWire. "We're going to use the $25,000 to hire more developers. For now, I have to get back to VeloCity Garage and keep working."

The teams each had three minutes to pitch their start-up ideas to a panel of judges. At least one founder on a pitching team must be a current student or a graduate of the University of Waterloo within the past year. VeloCity takes no intellectual property rights or equity in return.

“It was extremely difficult for the judges to make their decision today. The competition for these awards is intense because of the high caliber of teams,” said Mike Kirkup, director of VeloCity.

Another 10 young entrepreneurs from the University of Waterloo pitched their startup ideas for one of three grants worth $1,000 each. There were two winners.

PetroPredict, which won both best pitch and people's choice, is an oil well integrity prediction engine for the oil and gas industry. It enables subsurface engineers to identify low-capital, high-reward opportunities in their fields.

Helios won a grant for being most innovative. The company developed a technology that continually charges the battery of a cellphone throughout the day using sub-pixel solar cells embedded into the display. These solar cells will be unnoticeable to the naked eye during usage, and will channel energy from ambient light to charge the cellphone.

"I continue to be impressed by the level of talent vying for these grants," said Mike Stork, president at Stork Holdings and one of the judges for the VeloCity Fund Finals. "It's exciting to see these teams make their pitch to grow their companies and I look forward to them being successful."

Other judges for the $25,000 competition included Karam Nijjar, venture capitalist at iNovia Capital, and Cameron Hay, partner at Front Burner Consulting.

Past winners of the VeloCity Fund include Thalmic Labs, the makers of the MYO gesture control armband who launched from the VeloCity Garage in July, as well as current VeloCity Garage companies Weston Expressions, makers of the Linkett interactive digital signage system, and MappedIn, makers of indoor mapping technology.

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Architecture celebrates Rick Haldenby

This is an excerpt of a piece written by Carol Truemner, published in the Eng-E-News newsletter.

Reflecting on his career, Rick Haldenby says his proudest accomplishments as a Waterloo School of Architecture faculty member were the launching of the school’s Rome program and the establishing of its Cambridge campus, both which happened on exactly the same date – 25 years apart.

“It’s an amazing coincidence that the first lecture we ever gave in Rome was September 7, 1979, and the first class that occurred in Cambridge was held on September 7, 2004,” he says.

Championed by Haldenby, the school's milestones were instrumental in making the institution an international leader in design education and in attracting top students from around the world. The achievements are just two of many which will be highlighted at the November 30 celebration marking his 25 years as director of the School of Architecture. The length of time he has led the school is a record for the University of Waterloo.

Haldenby followed the architectural footsteps of his paternal grandfather and father, who were prominent Toronto architects. But while they both attended the University of Toronto, he came to Waterloo and graduated with a BArch in 1975. Before the ink on his degree was dry, Haldenby was asked to fill in for an ailing professor and teach a couple of courses.

When the term was up, he left to bike around Europe after deciding teaching wasn't for him. But his colleagues thought otherwise. While on his cycling trip, he received a telegram in Athens asking him to apply for one of three new School of Architecture positions. He found someone to type his CV, mailed it off, and six months later picked up a telegram from an American Express Office with a job offer. He returned to campus in the fall of 1976 as a junior professor and became the school’s director on January 1, 1988.

Robert Jan van Pelt, a Waterloo architecture professor, says Haldenby is always on the outlook for “the next best thing.”

And along the way there have been many of those “next best things.” While still a junior professor, Haldenby launched the Rome program and was the lead negotiator for Canadian schools of architecture on the establishment of a national program of accreditation that provided the basis for the integration of the Canadian architectural profession in North America, and the world at large.

Along with the November 30 event, Haldenby’s exceptional impact on the school and its students is being marked by two scholarships, including an undergraduate scholarship in his name.

Haldenby officially steps down as director at the end of December and will be succeeded by Ila Berman, who joined the school in September 2013. But rather than taking a break, Haldenby has a long list of plans that includes continuing his research and teaching in Rome where, along with founding the school’s Rome program, he married his wife Rosemary and their two sons, Adrian and Julian, were baptized. He will also be renovating the Palladian cottage his grandfather built on Rice Lake’s Spook Island.

Read the full piece on the Eng-E-News website.

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Study space on campus as classes wind down

Lectures end on Monday, December 2, and the Federation of Students has arranged for increased study space during the upcoming examination period, which is totally right around the corner if you didn't already know.

From December 2 to 20, the Great Hall in the Student Life Centre will feature tables and chairs.

On December 5, 6 and 9 to 13, Modern Languages 315 and 354 will be reserved for studying, as well as Hagey Hall 344 and 345.

On December 6 and from December 9 to 13, Modern Languages 212 and 311 will be available for student study use.

On December 5 and from December 9 to 12, Hagey Hall 336 is open for students to use for studying.

On December 5, 6, and from December 10 to 13, Hagey Hall rooms 123 and 139 will be reserved for student study space.

The examination period runs from Thursday, December 5 to Friday, December 20.

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