Research

Fireworks and Air Quality

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English: The New York City fireworks over the ...

English: The New York City fireworks over the East Village of New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we approach Canada Day (July 1) and Independence Day in the U.S. (July 4), our thoughts turn to the pyrotechnics that are a typical part of the celebrations.  For a chemical engineer, pyrotechnics are a fascinating topic because they rely on rapid combustion reactions and the presence of various elements that give rise to the different colours.  However, my research interests are in air quality and I’m at the Air & Waste Management Association conference in Chicago, so I’m going to review the air quality impact instead. Continue reading →

Our New 3D Printer

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Our new 3D printer, a Fortus 360mc rapid prototyping machine, was officially launched today in our Engineering 5 building.  I haven’t actually seen it, but there is a website link that describes what it is and how it works.  I will certainly have a look in the near future, because I can already think of a few custom parts I could make for my research projects.  I just need to teach myself AutoCAD first.

Apparently the 3D printing costs are some of the cheapest available, and anyone can submit a job, whether faculty, staff, or students.  Some of the student design teams have already been using it, and I bet it will be popular with a lot of student research and design projects.

Meeting Your Waterloo – Quantum-Nano Centre

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Today was the official opening for the new Quantum-Nano Centre (QNC) on the Waterloo campus, sponsored in-part by the co-founder of RIM and the Blackberry, Mike Lazaridis.  This will be the new “home” for our Nanotechnology Engineering students, with classrooms, teaching and research labs, faculty offices, and meeting spaces where people can collaborate.  The opening ceremonies had the usual speeches, which were actually quite inspirational.  But the biggest excitement was generated at the start when Prof. Stephen Hawking from Cambridge delivered the opening address! Continue reading →

University Rankings: Round 1 – ARWU

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The first set of university rankings has been released for this academic year.  This is the ARWU (academic ranking of world universities) put out by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.  I’m going to focus on the rankings of “Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences” category, since that’s most relevant to my interests, and they can be found at this link.  Since prospective students and parents sometimes spend a lot of time and effort pondering on the meaning of these rankings, let’s go through them together. Continue reading →

A Burning Issue

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Kitchener is a city located next to the city of Waterloo, so close together that it’s hard to tell where one city stops and the other starts.  They are two separate legal entities however, and in Kitchener there is a raging debate about limiting or banning backyard fires (Waterloo banned them some years ago).  The debate boils down to the rights of individuals to use their property as they see fit, versus the rights of their neighbours to clean air.  On technical grounds, I would side with the people who are seeking a ban, based on what we already know about wood fires and air quality. Continue reading →

Co-op Students and Stem Cell Research

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There’s an interesting article about two Nanotechnology Engineering co-op students who spent a work term doing stem cell research, an area I don’t work in but like to follow when I get a chance.  It’s all the more interesting, because they were working with a Professor at the University of California, Irvine campus.  What a great place for an undergrad student to be!

At the risk of repeating myself many times in future posts, I’m frequently amazed and impressed by the opportunities that our students have, if they’re motivated and adventurous enough to take advantage of them (which many clearly are).  And this is certainly not the first time I’ve seen co-op students spending a work term in research labs at other universities.  The article sidebar also gives another example from Harvard/MIT.  An odd situation in some ways, if you think about it.