A MESSAGE FROM THE PROGRAM DIRECTOR AND CHAIR
Bryan Tripp Professor and Director
On behalf of the 4B Biomedical Engineering students, I am delighted to welcome you to our Capstone Design Project Symposium. Launched in 2014, the Biomedical Engineering program offers a unique curriculum with a focus on biomedical systems and design. The program is run by the Department of Systems Design Engineering, in collaboration with the departments of Chemical, Electrical and Computer, and Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, the Department of Biology, and the School of Anatomy. This symposium will exhibit thirteen diverse engineering capstone design projects. The capstone design project is a much anticipated milestone in our program, for which students build their design team, select their problem space, and design and prototype a solution over three academic terms. These projects reflect much more than twelve months of design iteration and prototype evaluation. The teams must draw from the knowledge, resilience, critical thinking, and resourcefulness they have developed throughout the program, even more so given this year’s unprecedented challenges. The projects offer a glimpse of what our BME students can achieve and how their skills can impact society in their future careers. Congratulations to the BME students! Your commitment and perseverance have paid off, and you are well prepared for the next steps in your careers. It is unfortunate that we cannot celebrate this milestone together in person, but we are proud of your achievements, and confident that you will have important and positive impacts in the world. On behalf of myself, the BME instructors and the BME-SYDE staff, we hope that you will stay in touch, and we wish you every success.
Bryan Tripp Professor and Director
Lisa Aultman-Hall Professor and Chair
On behalf of the graduating Biomedical Engineering students, as well as our faculty and staff team, I am delighted to welcome you to the 2021 Capstone Design Symposium.
I wish my sincerest congratulations to all of the Capstone Design student teams, for perseverance in this most challenging year, the conclusion of nearly five years of hard work and study with us at UWaterloo and in the broader world during their co-op terms. The Capstone Design Symposium serves as the culmination of our unique UWaterloo BME program within which we deliberately and explicitly embed design experiences. We firmly believe that designing solutions to improve human health and communities is the core of our profession. The formal approaches for iterative design, prototyping, and engineering analysis will allow our BME graduates to excel in, and contribute to, the world.
As I return to my native Ontario to serve as department chair, I could not be more pleased to have learned in my first year that our department community exudes a genuine passion for design that complements the skillset we offer students in our core curriculum. BME students care about each other and community. Their faculty care about continuous improvement and adaptation of the program to address the timely challenges we face – challenges we see more clearly in many ways because of the reality of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
I recognize, in addition to the usual feelings of relief, apprehension and pride, that students feel some disappointment that their 4th year was “online” and “remote”. We all appreciate the connection technology can provide, but also recognize the critical importance of face-to-face interactions for education and especially capstone design experiences. This year, we have learned different things, unplanned things, in addition to the real-world design practice. The faculty and staff of SYDE have missed spending this last year with our 4th year students. We wish our graduates every success in their lifelong learning and journey. As students look back on their BME experiences, the ups and the downs, I invite them to remain a part of our UWaterloo community, keep in touch, and be part of designing the future BME program for the students that will follow.
Lisa Aultman-Hall Professor and Chair
Department of Systems Design Engineering