2024 News Archive

A lighter design helped a team of UWindsor engineering students find success in the Canadian National Concrete Canoe Competition, May 8 to 11 in Quebec.

An award for best quality canoe that could be mass-produced led the team to an overall showing of third among Ontario universities after an evaluation on academic, technical, and sports elements.

This year’s entry weighed just 250 pounds, a significant reduction from last year’s 800 pounds.

“The improvements to the design made the canoe hydrodynamic,” said fourth-year civil engineering major Jocelyn Boisimer, part of the geometric design team. “It was easier to control in the water and that was because of the different casting method compared to last year.”

The team parlayed that into success in the perimeter races, finishing sixth with women paddlers and seventh in the men’s race.

An honour roll cord he received at Convocation is particular meaningful because it reflects the support of family, friends, and mentors, says Gurbhej Singh, who celebrated in June graduating from the Master of Engineering program.

“It serves as a reminder of the value of perseverance and inspires me to continue pursuing excellence in all my endeavours,” Singh said. “I would also like to extend my gratitude to the University of Windsor for providing such an enriching environment that has enabled me to achieve this milestone.”

The new award was extended to graduating MEng candidates with a minimum 85 per cent grade point average and no final grade below 70 per cent. A total of 309 honour roll grads in the program crossed the stage June 5 and 6.

Niousha Bahadori said the achievement means more than just academic success.

Echolocation in bats, smart pavement, aircraft propulsion, drug discovery, and clean combustion — these are a just a handful of the new University of Windsor research projects the federal government will fund for the next five years.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) has announced it will fund 22 UWindsor researchers with grants totalling more than $3.8 million. Most of the funding comes from the Discovery Grants program, NSERC’s largest and longest-standing grant program.

“Canada’s science and research sector is solving some of the world’s greatest challenges, all while driving innovation, growth, and productivity,” said François-Philippe Champagne, federal Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, in announcing the funding recently. “Research programs like Discovery give researchers the flexibility to explore the most promising avenues of research as they emerge to ensure Canada remains a world leader in science and new technologies.”

Interactive exhibits and live demonstrations will showcase the potential impact of collaboration in exploration during the Engineering Research Partnership Open House on Wednesday, June 19.

Hosted by the Faculty of Engineering and the Office of Research and Innovation, the event draws a diverse crowd of industry leaders and community partners aiming to drive advancements in sustainable engineering solutions, smart technologies, and advanced manufacturing processes.

An academic standout through his undergraduate career, electrical engineering alumnus Gian Mario Favero will receive Governor General Silver Medal during the ninth session of Convocation, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 6.

The medal is awarded to the undergraduate student considered to have achieved the most outstanding academic record in comparison to their graduating peers. Although Favero graduated in October 2023, he was eligible for consideration since this medal is not awarded at Fall convocation.

The University of Windsor and community partners like Windsor Hackforge and Connecting Windsor-Essex have collaborated to create and offer a series of workshops to help teach career-building skills.

The “Improving Employability Summer Series” is designed for international students in the Master of Engineering (MEng) and Master of Applied Computing (MAC) programs as they look to gain additional skills that will be useful as they transition into their careers in Canada.

“The events have been curated with the goal of helping students improve their chances of employment in Canada,” says Victoria Abboud, series creator, organizer, and UWindsor professor.

Peter Frise, associate dean of engineering for professional programs, welcomed Master of Engineering students at an orientation session on Friday, May 3.

The day included presentations on academic policies, course requirements, faculty advising, students’ rights, peer support, and mentorship, followed by a campus tour provided by the representatives of the Engineering Society and lunch at the campus Whamburg location.

The UWindsor team in the Canadian National Concrete Canoe Competition has high hopes for its entry, in Quebec this week to be evaluated on academic, technical, and sports aspects.

“This year, we changed the design to a more traditional canoe shape and added some colour, and it looks a lot smoother,” says captain Katie Sinn, a third-year student of civil engineering. “It is lighter, and we decreased the weight by over 50 per cent from last year’s design.”

The competition, sponsored by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, challenges students from across the country to test their design prowess, shaping the dense material into a fully functional canoe ready to race in the water.

The University of Windsor is leading a $15 million research project to help Canada respond to future pandemics by strengthening our country’s biomanufacturing sector.

INSPIRE, short for the Integrated Network for the Surveillance of Pathogens: Increasing Resilience and Capacity in Canada’s Pandemic Response, brings together 43 experts from seven universities and public and private agencies in Canada and the United States. This team of microbiologists, biochemists, engineers, computer scientists, and experts in supply chains and public policy will look for ways to improve biomanufacturing and health sector supply chains, bolster cross-border trade and mobility, and explore new technologies in pathogen surveillance.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, we had supply chain shortages, we couldn’t get enough PPE in Canada, we weren’t making our own vaccines,” said Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research director Mike McKay, who is leading INSPIRE together with a researcher from the University of Guelph.

The University of Windsor is giving attendees at a conference in Germany a chance to try a remote-control car with a difference: it’s a full-size vehicle more than 6,500 km remote.

A team from Windsor Engineering has set up a connection between the Centre for Engineering Innovation and the Hannover Messe Expo, the world’s trade fair catering to companies from the mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and digital industries.