In 2005, the school was renamed the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science in honour of his generous Endowment for Excellence in Computer Science. "David has symbolized the Waterloo spirit of innovation and commitment to excellence throughout his remarkable career, and we are very proud of him," Alan George, the University of Waterloo's associate provost for Information Systems and Technology, said at the time.
Cheriton, a computer science professor at Stanford University in California, has maintained his connection to Waterloo by speaking at seminars and at the first David R. Cheriton Research Symposium in 2006. He also made another generous gift to the computer science school in 2003, in honour of his parents. That same year, he was given the Faculty of Mathematics Alumni Achievement Medal for his extraordinary research contributions to computer science and for successfully commercializing his research results.
Cheriton, who has been teaching at Stanford since 1981, has also been a technical advisor to many companies, including IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, and Google. He was co-founder of Granite Systems, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1996, and co-founder of Kealia Inc, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2004. He has been an active investor in high technology and helped provide initial funding to a number of companies in Silicon Valley, most notably Google.
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