#university-of-waterloo — Public Fediverse posts

More Men from Franklin’s Fatal 1845 Expedition Identified

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://theorkneynews.scot/2026/05/09/more-men-from-franklins-fatal-1845-expedition-identified/

Engineered Microbes Offer New Angle on Tumor Eradication

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have engineered bacteria to find and eat tumors. This new method could offer a less harmful cancer treatment.

#CancerResearch, #MedicalInnovation, #UniversityOfWaterloo, #TumorEradication, #Biotechnology

https://newsletter.tf/engineered-bacteria-target-tumors-cancer-treatment/

Scientists have created special bacteria that can find and eat cancer tumors. This is a new way to fight cancer that could be safer than current treatments.

#CancerResearch, #MedicalInnovation, #UniversityOfWaterloo, #TumorEradication, #Biotechnology
https://newsletter.tf/engineered-bacteria-target-tumors-cancer-treatment/

STUDENTS PROTEST OSAP CHANGES

Ontario students across the province are protesting about the recent changes made to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). The Ontario government has announced that, starting this fall, OSAP grants will decrease from a maximum of 85 per cent to 25 per cent.  

On Mar. 4, 2026, hundreds of students and community members from across Ontario gathered at Queen’s Park to protest the cuts. Similar protests broke out in different cities, including Waterloo and Ottawa. The OSAP changes are not only affecting post-secondary students but also secondary schools.  

At the University of Waterloo, the reaction has been described as historic. Remington Aginskaya-Zhi, Vice President of the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA), noted that the campus is seeing a level of mobilization not seen in decades.  

“This is the most engaged we’ve seen students probably ever,” Aginskaya-Zhi said. “The rally that we held was one of the biggest gatherings or protests on campus in probably our entire history.”  

The movement is gaining even more traction in the Greater Toronto Area, where students are framing the cuts as a systemic attack on public institutions. Trudi Kiropatwa, a third-year student at Toronto Metropolitan University and a member of the Student Mobilization Committee (SMC), says the impact in Toronto is extreme.  

“We’re essentially on a sinking ship,” Kiropatwa said. “This government and their corporate cronies see us as customers and our education as an industry that is ready to be exploited.”  

The urgency stems from a lack of clarity on how these cuts will affect individual bank accounts. According to WUSA, the provincial OSAP estimator for the upcoming year has yet to be released, leaving students in a state of financial limbo.  

Kiropatwa noted that for many, the breaking point is graduating into a job market with record-high youth unemployment while saddled with massive debt.  

“Me, personally, I’m going to be graduating with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt already without these changes,” she said. “These changes are making the issue ten times worse.”  

“Students definitely are very worried,” Aginskaya-Zhi said. “We are hearing stories from students telling us they’re uncertain whether they can come back to school next year, or whether they can pursue graduate studies.”  

This uncertainty is already forcing students to make difficult lifestyle changes. Aginskaya reported that some students are opting for longer commutes rather than living in Waterloo to save on costs, while others are seeing their younger siblings reconsider university altogether.  

Beyond the provincial level, the University of Waterloo is also grappling with internal budget crisis pressures. Aginskaya-Zhi highlighted that financial support units on campus are currently understaffed, which could complicate the processing of student aid.  

“The university right now is understaffed and has lots of challenges to hire new staff…but funding should not come at the cost of giving more debt to students,” she said.  

In response, organizations like WUSA and the SMC carried out a massive convergence at Queen’s Park on Mar. 24, 2026. Despite the government maintaining its argument that the 25 per cent grant limit is sustainable, the mobilizations saw hundreds of activists reiterating demands for a full reversal.  

“We’re not here to demand a return to normal…which is a Band-Aid solution,” Kiropatwa said. “We’re here fighting for free, democratic, and accessible education.”  

“Right now, I think students are angry, and what we are focusing on is giving students an avenue to let out their anger,” Aginskaya-Zhi said.   

She emphasized that the momentum will not fade as the semester ends.   

“Just because winter term is ending and it’s summer now doesn’t mean that students have forgotten this betrayal from the government.”  

As Parliament returns to session, WUSA intends to keep the pressure on local MPPs to ensure the student voice is heard.  

“We hear your anger, we hear your frustration,”  Aginskaya-Zhi concluded as a message to the student body. “We are going to work to make sure that you can share that with us.”  

A WALK AROUND BECHTEL PARK WITH EMILY URQHART

It was author Emily Urquhart’s pup June that brought us out to the Bechtel Dog Park on a grey Saturday afternoon. We were greeted by a well-dressed poodle in boots and an orange jacket, and June and her new friend ran off while Urquhart and I opted for a slower pace.

“Walking is one hundred per cent part of my writing process,” Urquhart said as we followed the path on a loop around a cluster of trees. “[O]ften, when I’m walking, I’m working something out…something about the movement of walking forwards can sometimes shake things out in a way that, if I was sitting at a desk and trying to write, it just doesn’t work.”

Urquhart was born in Kitchener and lived in Waterloo until she was seven, when her family moved to Wellesley. After high school she studied art history and journalism, then ended up at Memorial University in Newfoundland where she completed a PhD in Folklore Studies and also met her future husband. It was his job at the University of Waterloo that brought them back to Ontario to settle with their family in Kitchener.

“I was always interested in folklore,” Urquhart said. “I had this huge Brothers Grimm silver-coloured book that I used to read as a kid a lot. And I was interested in my Irish culture and heritage, and that kind of naturally coincides with folklore.”

Urquhart’s understanding and exploration of folklore goes beyond the written stories of her youth, and includes visual art, gossip, rumours and even home decor and bumper stickers.

“[Folklore is] the way you’re signifying who you are to the world and the story you’re telling about yourself and your place in it,” Urquhart said. “Once you’ve got [folklore] under your belt, it kind of changes your worldview.”

Urquhart explored folklore in her third book, Ordinary Wonder Tales, published in 2022 and shortlisted for the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. She drew on her journalism background for her second book, The Age Of Creativity, published in 2020, in which she examined late-in-life creativity using her father, acclaimed painter Tony Urquhart, as the subject and inspiration.

Her mother, award-winning novelist and poet Jane Urquhart, is also an artistic presence in Urquhart’s life. She was in high school when her mother gained wide-spread notoriety for her novel Away, and people became interested in her last name and family.

“There was a rumour at university that my mom was Jan Arden because there was a broken telephone situation…someone said ‘Jane Urquhart,’ but [someone else] heard Jan Arden,” Urquhart said. “So, I’ve always had a kind of kinship with Jan Arden.”

From an early age, Urquhart was an avid reader and was also drawn to writing.

“I had teachers who [said] ‘oh, you’re such a good writer’…But I’d feel like, is that because my mom’s a writer, or is it coming from an authentic place?” she said. “But I knew I liked to do it, and I also knew that it didn’t pay any money.”

Pursuing a PhD allowed Urquhart to continue reading and writing, and also to have some security in the form of teaching. In addition to being a published author and a non-fiction editor at The New Quarterly, Urquhart is also a Professor of Creative Writing at Laurier where she coordinates the Edna Staebler Awards.

It was through The New Quarterly that Urquhart connected with other writers in the area. At the Wild Writers’ Festival in 2019, Urquhart was approached by novelist Carrie Snyder about forming a writer’s group along with author Tasneem Jamal. Urquhart agreed, and they have been writing and workshopping ever since.

“It’s so wonderful to have that community,” Urquhart said. “We write together, which I’d never done…I’ve been through two books with them now.”

Urquhart’s experience of community is one done directly with other people as she is not on any social media. In 2016 she made the decision to leave Facebook when she found the platform to be full of vitriol and in-fighting. She left Twitter not long after.

“It was getting me down,” Urquhart said. “Finally, I was like, no one’s inviting you to this party. You have to stop showing up.”

While she reads poetry daily and cites short stories as a favourite genre, Urquhart is also drawn to some less-expected media.

“I like to watch really trashy documentaries,” Urquhart said. “When I say documentary, people think, ‘Oh, that sounds smart.’ No, I like anything to do with catfishing…I’m really into cults. I just find it fascinating.”

Urquhart’s dog June came over to say a quick hello before going to greet a new arrival. Before adopting June from the Humane Society a year ago, Urquhart and her family rescued a dog from another agency; however, they were unable to keep him because of an aggressive response to walks.

“He was sweet, actually, in the house, but…he wouldn’t go in our yard, so he had to be walked…whenever I walked him, he attacked me,” Urquhart said. “I had leather gloves, they were split open, my parka was split open. I was on the ground trying to shield my face and he had my hand and he didn’t let go.”

The experience did not deter Urquhart from dogs, however. 

“I just got obsessed or something after that,” Urquhart said. “I was thinking about dogs, I only watched things about dogs, and then I started writing about it.”

Part of that writing process included painting a watercolour of the destroyed gloves and using visual art as research. What started as memoir turned into a fairy tale.

“I don’t know if the stories I’ve been writing connect as one piece or if they’re connected stories,” Urquhart said. 

“But they all have some sort of supernatural…element threaded through them.”

While the move to writing fiction might be new for Urquhart, her background in folklore and careful powers of observation honed through journalism will no doubt mean she is right at home navigating these creative waters.

Canadian quarterback Tre Ford signs with Hamilton Tiger-Cats: sources

Courtesy: CFL The Hamilton Tiger-Cats have signed Canadian quarterback Tre Ford, per sources. It’s a two-year contract through…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #3Down #3DownNation #bolevimitchell #CA #Canada #Canadian #CFL #chrisjones #Edmonton #EdmontonElks #elks #hamilton #hamiltontiger-cats #HecCrighton #OUA #Ticats #Tiger-Cats #TreFord #USports #UniversityofWaterloo #warriors #WaterlooWarriors
https://www.newsbeep.com/381543/

Lecture: Poetry, Pain, and the Promise of Palestine, UofW, 7-9pm on Wednesday 26 November 2025

• What: Poetry, Pain, and the Promise of Palestine
• When: 7:00pm-9:00pm on Wednesday 26 November 2025
• Where: Federation Hall, University of Waterloo
• Location: 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario Map
• Register Online: https://uwaterloo.ca/arts/events/poetry-pain-and-promise-palestine

The University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Arts is honoured to present guest speaker Dr. Sa’ed Atshan – scholar, Palestinian Quaker, and LGBTQ human rights advocate – on the role of poetry in capturing the realities of contemporary Palestinian life in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and beyond.

Please join us for this unique opportunity to explore how interdisciplinary scholarship can be applied to both understand and address a global crisis which has had such tragic human consequences.

About the speaker

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. He has previously served as an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Senior Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. He earned a PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies and MA in Social Anthropology from Harvard University, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and BA from Swarthmore College. Atshan is the author of Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford University Press, 2020), coauthor (with Katharina Galor) of The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (Duke University Press, 2020), and co-editor (with Galor) of Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2022).

Details and proceedings

Registration is required for in-person and online attendance. For those attending in-person, proof of registration is required at the reception area.

• Doors open: 6:30 p.m.
• Lecture and moderated Q & A: 7:00 to 8:20 p.m.
• Reception for the in-person audience: 8:30 to 9:00 p.m.

Paid visitor parking is available in Lot M across from Federation Hall. More parking information.

This lecture is made possible through the generosity of alumni and friends. UofW Faculty of Arts extends sincere appreciation to the donors who contributed to the Foundation for Palestinian Studies Fund.

Watch past recordings from the UofW Palestinian Lectures series on YouTube.

#palestine #sa #saedAtshan #universityOfWaterloo #uofw #uofwFacultyOfArts #waterlooregion

https://get.mypost.to/9vcQaJ
Vaccination rates are falling in many communities due to widespread mis...
#socialmedia #healthprevention #universityofwaterloo #eurekalert

https://get.mypost.to/9vcQaJ
Vaccination rates are falling in many communities due to widespread mis...
#socialmedia #healthprevention #universityofwaterloo #eurekalert

UW AND GOOGLE PARTNER TO FURTHER RESEARCH ON AI

The University of Waterloo is partnering with Google to explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on education in a new workshop.  

Google has invested $1 million into the partnership, which will have a mandate to research and educate the public on how humans interact with AI.   

The chair will be held by Edith Law, professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo and executive director of the Future of Work Institute.  

“The partnership will enable a number of research and education initiatives at the intersection of technology design and pedagogical innovation, including hands-on learning labs for students to envision technologies for the future of work and learning through prototyping,” the University of Waterloo stated in a press release.   

The partnership is one piece of a larger mandate from the Future of Work Institute, which is funded by a $450,000 grant from the University of Waterloo’s Global Futures Fund.  

The research being conducted through the partnership has three main pillars.  

The first is a set of research projects looking at AI-facilitated learning technologies.  

“This is really just understanding and developing novel education tools and understanding how students might use it,” Law said.  

“One of the research topics is learning by teaching. So instead of having AI be the information provider, we’re turning it on its head and having AI act as a less knowledgeable peer that can be taught by students, and the students learn by teaching such an agent.”  

Another aspect of the partnership is to investigate new paradigms of learning and teaching through  an eight-week program that began in early October.   

Law said the labs allow technical and non-technical students across campus to work together to envision what learning tools could look like using AI-supported prototyping tools.  

For example, students will use Gemini Canvas and Google AI studio, where they can create a whole app just by prompting AI.   

The third main piece of the partnership is to understand how technology can co-evolve with learning environments and policy.   

“This is something I think is needed for learning technology to actually work in real-world learning environments,” Law said.   

Law noted that learning technology is complex to incorporate into learning environments. When AI and learning technology enter classrooms, Law said educators must consider the role of the technology, the role of instructors, and the role of peers and how the technology may evolve in these roles.  

Additionally, policy can help guide students and educators to understand how learning technology can be used, how to assess the quality of the work produced, and more.   

For Law, this research is coming at an important time.  

“There’s no question that students have access [to AI],” Law said.  

“I think that there’s definitely an evolution going on where students have access to these tools and then instructors are adapting the way they deliver their courses and do the evaluation. I’ve heard of lots of interesting ways in which instructors have done that,” she said.  

In this way, Law is also thinking about the impact AI will have on career readiness.  

“I think it is important for the next generation to have just a basic level of AI literacy,” Law said.   

“Understanding ways of thinking about AI and understanding the context of use…Being able to operate in this kind of environment and understanding how to get around an AI-rich environment is something that all students should be trained to do,” she said. 

#AI #artificialIntelligence #computerScience #CraigBecker #edithLaw #Environment #FutureOfWorkInstitute #GlobalFuturesFund #SafinaJennah #tech #technology #universityOfWaterloo #universityOfWaterlooSGlobalFuturesFund

🚫 The University of Waterloo has heroically "solved" the AI menace by withholding student contest results, proving once and for all that if you can't beat the robots, just hide the scoreboard. Meanwhile, nginx stands firm as the true gatekeeper of knowledge with its cryptic "403 Forbidden" wisdom. 🙈💻
https://thelogic.co/news/waterloo-university-coding-competition-ai-cheating/ #UniversityOfWaterloo #AIControversy #nginx403 #ForbiddenKnowledge #HackerNews #ngated

University of Waterloo withholds coding contest results over suspected AI use

https://thelogic.co/news/waterloo-university-coding-competition-ai-cheating/

#HackerNews #UniversityOfWaterloo #AIUse #CodingContest #Cheating #EthicsInTech #EducationNews

Film Screening: Bread and Roses, 5pm on Wed 12 March 2025 by Amnesty International UW

What: Film Screening: Bread and Roses
When: 5:00pm on Wednesday 12 March 2025
Where: United College Alumni Hall A
Location: 190 Westmount Road North, Waterloo, Ontario Map
Register: Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bread-and-roses-screening-tickets-1262702891339
Website: https://linktr.ee/AmnestyUW

To: Faculty and Friends of the Human Rights Program at United College,

Amnesty International’s UW Chapter cordially invites you to join us for the screening of the momentous and enraging documentary Bread and Roses. Directed by Sahra Mani and produced with Malala Yousafzai, as well as Jennifer Lawrence, the documentary follows three Afghan women post 2021 Taliban take-over as they begin to navigate life under the oppressive rule and fight for their autonomy.

What you need to know:

Snacks will be provided.

The Amnesty International UW Chapter aims to raise awareness and hands on support for both local Waterloo and international human rights issues. We ask our members what human rights issues they want our focus on, and for this term, our members chose women’s rights in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is ranked last in the Women, Peace, and Security Index. Since the Taliban regained power in 2021, women and girls have faced an unprecedented loss of their rights and freedoms. Banning girls from post primary education, from working jobs or volunteer roles, from public life, and much more, the Taliban created the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis. Now, with the pulling of USAID contracts from an already reeling economy, the threat of survival looms over the lives Afghan women and their families.

Bread and Roses is a chant that finds its origins in the American women’s suffragette movement. It’s a call for bread, work, and education. The documentary, using guerilla techniques and phone cameras, shows the rise of the Taliban through the eyes of three female activists as they struggle to retain their basic rights. The film may be disturbing to some, as it covers the real and extreme risks of punishment and abduction.

We hope to see you there,

UW Amnesty International Chapter.

Reach out to us @aihumanrights on Instagram Or visit our link tree at https://linktr.ee/AmnestyUW.

#AmnestyInternational #AmnestyInternationalSUWChapter #MalalaYousafzai #UnitedCollege #UniversityOfWaterloo