Celebrating Vanier Scholars: University of Waterloo’s Academic Excellence
As part of a recent Government of Canada announcement, five University of Waterloo doctoral students were named as successful recipients of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Vanier CGS).
The Vanier CGS program awards up to $50,000 per year for three years, for students working in social sciences and humanities, natural sciences, engineering and health.
“The University is pleased to have the support of the Government of Canada to fund these five outstanding Vanier scholars at Waterloo,” says Dr. Jeff Casello, associate vice-president of graduate studies and postdoctoral affairs.
“The Vanier program unequivocally accelerates the careers of these enormously promising scholars, while their research addresses the challenges that face our world today. As an institution, and for Canada, we are thrilled to welcome these students to our graduate studies community and hold much anticipation for the transformative outcomes they will produce.”
Waterloo presents the following Vanier scholars:
Sharafat Ali, Department of Chemical Engineering, supervised by Professor Xianshe Feng, is working on a research project titled “Synthesis of two-dimensional (2D) MXene nanochannels lamellar membranes for organic solvent separation.”
Arya Amiri, Department of Systems Design Engineering, is working with Professor Tais Sigaeva on a project titled “Effect of skin wound’s geometry on the healing process: Constitutive modeling, computational analysis, and experimental validation.”
Blake VanBerlo, David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, is working on a research project titled “Improving performance and label efficiency for supervised learning tasks in lung ultrasound interpretation with preexisting and novel self-supervised pre-training methods,” with Professor Jesse Hoey.
Aliya McNeil, Department of Psychology, supervised by Professor Christine Purdon, is focusing on a Vanier research project titled “Insecure attachment, intrusive thoughts, and safety behaviours: A mixed methods investigation of fear of compassion and shame as mediators”.
Cloé St-Hilaire, School of Planning, working with Professor Martine August, on “Financialization and digitization in the Canadian rental housing sector: A three-tier approach to understanding the emergence, specificities and impact of digital technologies as they relate to rental housing financialization.”
