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Research at Waterloo

  • New tools for ‘climate emergency’

    Thomas Homer-Dixon – Arts

    Fleeing the disciplinary confines of his past, Thomas Homer-Dixon has arrived at Waterloo, a free-range academic. “Coming to Waterloo is like breathing pure oxygen. I’m being allowed to do what I want for the first time since I was a post-doc.”

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  • Eco-industry under scrutiny

    Alain-Désiré Nimubona – Arts

    You could say Alain-Désiré Nimubona is caught between a rock and a hard place. As an environmental economist — in a small, but growing discipline — he tries to balance protecting the environment with sustaining the economy.

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  • Women struggle with stigma of prison

    Susan Arai – Applied Health Sciences

    Uncertain Futures: Women Leaving Prison and Re-entering Community, a report co-authored by Susan Arai, explores the “importance of building relationships to bridge the chasm between women and their community” after they are released from Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener.

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  • After a stroke: regaining mobility

    Bill McIlroy – Applied Health Sciences

    For stroke victims, fear of falling can be an insurmountable hurdle to recovery. Kinesiology professor Bill McIlroy saw the effects of that fear after his grandmother broke her hip, and he’s determined to smooth the path for others struggling to regain mobility.

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  • Carving a niche with creativity

    Tara Vinodrai – Environment

    “I’ve always been interested in creative activity, how it is organized through space and changes with time,” says geography and environmental management professor Tara Vinodrai, who holds a cross-appointment to the Centre for Environment and Business.

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  • Lake ice augurs climate change

    Claude Duguay – Environment

    Studies of receding glaciers and melting sea ice are suddenly a hot topic as earthlings brace for a warmer planet. For Claude Duguay, an interest in the cryosphere — Earth’s ice masses and snow deposits — predates current concerns, going back to the backyard ice rink of his childhood in Montreal.

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  • Research revolutionizes alloys

    Mary Wells – Engineering

    Mary Wells arrived at Waterloo only a year ago, but she’s hit the ground running. With both government and industry support, she’s joined colleagues David Weckman and Shahrzad Esmaeili on research that is revolutionizing the aluminum processing industry.

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  • A plug for energy solutions

    Jatin Nathwani – Engineering

     When Jatin Nathwani retired as manager of strategic planning for Hydro One in 2006, he was looking forward to some down time. Within a year, however, he had rejoined the fray — accepting the Ontario Research Chair in Public Policy and Sustainable Energy Management at Waterloo.

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  • Pondering the design of algorithms

    Chaitanya Swamy – Mathematics

    When Chaitanya Swamy asks questions, he doesn’t look for answers with test tubes or microscopes or, sometimes, even computers. His interest is the design of algorithms — a study of methods of computation — where solutions are often simply found in his head.

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  • Calculations take flight

    Lilia Krivodonova – Mathematics

    Applied mathematicians like Lilia Krivodonova use computers to tackle scientific problems that have proved impossible to solve for more than 100 years. “Most equations of practical interest can’t be solved exactly,” she says. “It’s not only too difficult, but theoretically impossible. When we build or compute something, it’s never exact. There’s always some error.” 

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  • Coaxing nanocrystals to multitask

    Pavle Radovanovic – Science

    Pavle Radovanovic’s budding career as a concert musician ended in his teens when he discovered “a true love for science.” But those long hours of practicing his violin and trumpet provided not only a life-long hobby, but the discipline he needs to be a successful scientist.

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  • Tracking CO2 across disciplines

    John C. Lin – Science

    As part of a multi-institutional, cross-Canada research program, earth and environmental sciences professor John Lin is trying to answer that question by determining “exactly how much and where across the Canadian landscape carbon dioxide (CO2) — one of the main gases implicated in causing global warming — is being added or removed from the atmosphere.”

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