Research at Waterloo
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Exercising healthy choices
Rhona Hanning – Applied Health Sciences
Troubling, but true: Canada’s young people are becoming obese. Although many social and environmental factors are involved, the chief culprits are poor eating habits and lack of exercise. Obesity is a particular problem among Aboriginal youth, putting them at risk for diabetes at ever-younger ages.
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In the driver's seat
Jack Callaghan – Applied Health Sciences
Working an eight-hour shift in a cruiser can make a police officer a prime candidate for low back pain. UW kinesiology professor Jack Callaghan, the only researcher in Canada focusing on low back pain from prolonged sitting, is on the case.
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Research makes dramatic impact
Sherry Dupuis – Applied Health Sciences
The director of the Murray Alzheimer Research and Education Program would like to see the profile of UW research expanded beyond its appearance in academic journals. “We need to find better means of getting research into the hands of people who need it the most,” says recreation and leisure studies professor Sherry Dupuis.
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Healthy populations combat cancer
Roy Cameron – Applied Health Sciences
“I’ve got the best job in the world,” says Roy Cameron, a professor in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences and executive director of the Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation (CBRPE) at UW. “It’s the perfect job for someone like me, whose passion is making a difference in the world.”
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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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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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Patrolling arctic sovereignty
Whitney Lackenbauer – Arts
Some of Whitney Lackenbauer’s most memorable research interviews, he says, “have been conducted in tents swapping stories about polar bear encounters, around a bonfire on an isolated beach on Nootka Island, and pulling snowmachines out of the bush in Labrador.”
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Sounds of the future
Karen Collins – Arts
As holder of the Canada Research Chair in Communication and Technology, and a member of UW’s Canadian Centre of Arts and Technology, Karen Collins explores the semiotics (symbolic language) of sound. She focuses on using sound effectively in interactive media such as video games, where users can change the narrative.
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Emotions and the brain
Paul Thagard – Arts
While we tend to call upon metaphors of head versus heart when talking about the decisions we make, the truth is that thinking and feeling are not so easily separated. In fact, according to philosopher and cognitive scientist Paul Thagard, reason and emotion are closely intertwined. And both are, quite literally, matters of the head.
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Poverty: bad decisions or poor policy?
Lori Curtis – Arts
Canadian women between the ages of 45 and 64 are at increased risk of living in long-term poverty, and Lori Curtis wants to know why. A study being conducted by Curtis and her economics department colleague Kathleen Rybczynski will examine the impact of social policy changes — as well as the significance of “life circumstances” — on the economic well-being of women in this age group.
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Sourcing sound financial advice
Patricia O'Brien – Arts
Financial analysts in the United States serve as “information intermediaries,” a role that makes them both influential, and susceptible to influence. How analysts wield their influence is the focus of one aspect of Patricia O’Brien’s research.
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Keeping the CEO honest
Kareen Brown – Arts
“Think about the fact that when companies like Enron fail, the CEO walks away with a couple million dollars — for some guys in excess of $50 million — often the consequence of the CEO’s bad decisions,” says Kareen Brown. The School of Accounting and Finance professor wants to determine if anything good comes from these severance packages. Surprisingly, she believes it does.
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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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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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Saving stressed bridges
Scott Walbridge – Engineering
Metal fatigue can take down steel bridges. Scott Walbridge keeps them standing. Bridges are stressed repeatedly as trucks pass over them. The effect is small but can add up to critical damage. Think of bending a paperclip back and forth, says Walbridge. You can only bend it so many times before it breaks.
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Harnessing sun power
Siva Sivoththaman – Engineering
Siva Sivoththaman can see the day when sunlight will power our homes and workplaces. Affordable photovoltaic (PV) technology — the conversion of solar energy to electricity through semi-conductor solar cells — is much closer to actuality than it was a few years ago.
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Picking stem cells from the family tree
Eric Jervis – Engineering
“Look for something wacky in biology,” Eric Jervis tells his students, and then challenges them to decipher the underlying design principles. The chemical engineering professor, cross-appointed to physics and biology departments, has followed the same model in his own research. Ever since he can remember, he’s been “struck by the amazing complexity of biology.”
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Easier decisions for entrepreneurs
Moren Lévesque – Engineering
Finding ways to help entrepreneurs succeed, where most fail: that’s Moren Lévesque’s challenge. In Canada, only 50 per cent of new enterprises survive for three years, and by the end of 10 years, only 20 per cent are left standing. As Canada Research Chair in Innovation and Technical Entrepreneurship Lévesque would like to turn those stats around.
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The cure for global warming by architecture
Terri Meyer Boake – Engineering
Terri Meyer Boake admits her ambitions are lofty: “I’m trying to save the world, one architecture student at a time.” For the School of Architecture professor, “research arises from a problem; it’s problem solving.” She sees global warming as the pre-eminent problem of our time, one in which architects are implicated: “Buildings produce 40 to 70 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide.”
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Redefining public space in the power centre
Lola Sheppard – Engineering
While architects have traditionally considered aesthetics and spatial composition in their designs, Lola Sheppard also thinks in terms of social interaction: who uses the space, when, how, and why? Instead of envisioning buildings, she sets her sights on the bleak expanses of suburban retail landscapes.
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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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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 recipe for safe food in Vietnam
Steffanie Scott – Environment
Few things are more basic than food. And few things are more multi-faceted, says Steffanie Scott, a professor in geography jointly appointed to environment and resource studies, who studies changing food systems in Vietnam. “Food production takes so many forms, from subsistence agriculture to ultra-modern industrial food supply chains. And it brings in so many issues — social inequalities, rural transformation, health, and the environment.”
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Destination: sustainable tourism
Daniel Scott – Environment
When Daniel Scott began his research career in the late 1990s, he examined the impact of climate change on the tourism industry: how ski hills would survive with less snow, for example. Since then, his vision has evolved to consider the flip side of that coin — how tourism contributes to the problem of climate change, mainly through air travel.
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Empowering conservation
Jennifer Lynes – Environment
Inspired by the grassroots efforts of high school students to cut energy use in their community, Jennifer Lynes has lent her research expertise to the Shelburne Power Awareness Program. The environment and resource studies professor worked with the youth-led Reduce the Juice program in Shelburne, Ontario, a town of just over 5,000 residents, to analyze the success of the 2007 project in promoting energy conservation.
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Among the black flies, diamonds, and peat
Jonathan Price – Environment
It’s hard to imagine a more inhospitable place to spend the summer than the muskeg of Northern Ontario’s James Bay lowlands. But that’s the destination of geography professor Jonathan Price and his research team. They fly into the De Beers Canada Victor diamond mine project and brave the black flies and isolation of the mining camp to conduct research in one of the world’s largest peatland complexes.
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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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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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Considering cognition in accessible design
John Lewis – Environmental Studies
“How we treat older members of society is important,” says John Lewis. “Giving them an opportunity to live as independently as possible for as long as possible is a growing issue in urban planning.”
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Neighbourhood could hold key to disease
Jane Law – Environmental Studies
“I believe where you live — your neighbourhood — has an effect on how healthy you are and how long you live,” says Jane Law. The School of Planning professor, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Health Studies and Gerontology, is working with Region of Waterloo Public Health to determine if there are opportunities for collaboration on research to locate areas with risk factors to health, uncover the causes, and use the information to help policy-makers improve the well-being of residents.
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Balancing investment risk
Ken Seng Tan – Mathematics
Any investment has inherent risks. What is important is managing or mitigating risk exposure. Ken Seng Tans research focuses on providing innovative risk management solutions that help companies and investments remain sound over the long term. Hopefully, the kind of information my analysis generates will help companies and protect policy holders, Tan says.
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Diagnosing medical data
Grace Yi – Mathematics
Grace Yi’s computer doesn’t look like a scalpel, but that’s what it is. Using sharp-edged mathematical tools, she cuts deep into health research studies, diagnoses data problems, and prescribes better statistical methods for producing more useful results.
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Calculating currents to save whales
Francis Poulin – Mathematics
An applied math professor’s calculations of an ocean current in Cape Cod may help the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale to survive. Breaching the boundaries between academic disciplines, Francis Poulin has waded into physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science in an effort to understand, predict, and describe the current through which the whales navigate each spring.
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Number theory a vast and fertile field
Yu-Ru Liu – Mathematics
“The study of hidden patterns of numbers,” is how pure math professor Yu-Ru Liu describes number theory, her area of research. Consider the puzzle of twin primes, for example. The prime pairs (p, p + 2), such as (3, 5) and (5, 7) are called twin primes. “We know there are an infinite number of primes. Are there an infinite number of twin primes? We think so, but we haven’t been able to prove this.
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Game theory blurs lines between work and play
Kate Larson – Mathematics
A love of board games and a fascination with auctions — going back to childhood — has led Kate Larson to a research career in computer science and game theory. Even today, she admits, definitions of work and play sometimes overlap in her world, like when she plays strategy games with grad students as part of her research.
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Getting a fix on privacy
Urs Hengartner – Mathematics
Handy new location-based services — using Global Positioning System (GPS) — can provide directions to a restaurant or alert a cellphone user if a friend is nearby. The downside: The location of that friend is also known to a third party, the cellphone provider.
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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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Lighting up quantum communication
Kevin Resch – Science
There’s a light show in Kevin Resch’s shining new lab. The UW physics and astronomy professor passes an intensely bright blue laser beam through a crystal, producing a cone of red light and pairs of entangled photons (light particles).
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Batteries power green future
Linda Nazar – Science
“We’re in a global climate change crisis and need to have a fundamental shift in the way we look at energy,” says Linda Nazar, who sees her research focus as “absolutely vital for this planet, for life on Earth.”
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Grand River under siege
William Taylor – Science
When William Taylor wades into the Grand with his fly rod, he ponders the future of the Canadian Heritage River that flows through Waterloo Region. The biology professor, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Limnology (the study of fresh water lakes, ponds and streams), is increasingly concerned about the impact of urban development and climate change on the river.
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Packing a laser punch
Donna Strickland – Science
A self-described “laser jock,” Donna Strickland inhabits a rarified but highly competitive world where it’s all about “who has the shortest pulse, the most energy, the highest average power.” Internationally renowned for the development of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) more than 20 years ago with her PhD supervisor Gérard Mourou, the physics professor still finds laser research a thrill.
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Seeking the myopia signal
Elizabeth Irving – Science
“In some ways, I’m a bit of a weird bird,” says School of Optometry professor Elizabeth Irving, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Animal Biology. “Not many optometrists come back and do eye research.”
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Targeted DNA delivery holds hope for diabetes
Jamie Joseph – Science
Jamie Joseph loves a challenge. That’s why the School of Pharmacy professor is trying to unravel the mysteries of diabetes. “It’s one of the most perplexing diseases to study; there’s still lots to learn about it, it’s so complex.”
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Novel nanotech drug delivery
Marianna Foldvari – Science
“Imagine,” says Marianna Foldvari, “chicken wire rolled up into a tube.” That’s how a carbon nanotube would look. With a diameter of one to 50 nanometres — 1,000 times smaller than a human hair — the nanotube could be loaded with drug molecules, and implanted or injected into a patient.
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Interdisciplinary researcher looks at aging vision
Vasudevan (Vengu) Lakshminarayanan – Science
Many visual functions decline with age. As people grow older, for example, they need glasses to read due to changes in the eye’s lens. School of Optometry professor Vasudevan (Vengu) Lakshminarayanan is interested in less-common phenomena: visual functions that don’t change with age.
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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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