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Research Environment

Research Environment

At Waterloo, we strive to create an outstanding and collegial research environment for our PhD students. Some of the opportunities for development include the following:

Weekly Seminar Series

Every Friday we hold a workshop that is open to all faculty and PhD students. These seminars provide students with a wonderful orientation to research and exposure to a wide variety of topics. They also provide our students with the opportunity to meet with faculty from other universities.

Information about this research seminar series is available at:

http://saf.uwaterloo.ca/schedule.html

 

Emphasis On Formal Research Assistantships

Funding support is contingent on working 10 hours per week throughout the year as a research assistant. Every year, students are matched with faculty members based on the student’s research interests and skills, and the faculty member’s needs. The goal of the assignment is for the student to obtain a valuable apprenticeship and the faculty member to receive valuable research assistance.

 

Brown Bag Lunches

We hold "brown bag" or informal lunches with PhD students and faculty weekly to discuss research ideas. Group members bring ideas they're working on, topics they want to think more about, or puzzles they want help solving.  Participation is voluntary. Presentations are informal, and group members offer their undivided attention and frank feedback over lunch. 

Information about the brown bag lunch series is available at:
http://saf.uwaterloo.ca/SAF-BBLG/

 

Opportunities To Present To Faculty

Students have several opportunities to present their work to the faculty. At the end of the first year, students present a summer research paper. Although expectations are moderate since this is an early project, some students' projects have later developed into promising working papers. In addition to the PhD Proposal and Defence, students are also welcome to present additional work-in-progress, to gain experience presenting and to obtain valuable feedback from faculty and students.