News

The 2026 Cecil Graham Doctoral Dissertation Award provided by the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS) is awarded to Dr. Melissa Stadt for her work on the mathematical modelling of electrolyte homeostasis in vertebrates. Dr. Stadt completed her PhD in the department of Applied Mathematics in 2025, under the supervision of Prof. Anita Layton.
Dr. Stadt’s work is an important contribution to our understanding of how multiple physiological systems interact to achieve robustness and adaptability. Her modelling efforts highlight the delicate balance of transfers of ions between organs including, in the case of calcium, into and out of bones. In addition to baseline physiological conditions, Dr. Stadt considered the particular stresses associated with pregnancy and lactation, as well as various pathological conditions that affect electrolyte homeostasis, and therefore important parameters of health such as bone density.

Professor Brian Ingalls of the department of Applied Mathematics co-led a research team that presented promising proof-of-principle results in the development of a live biotherapeutic product approach to treating cancerous tumors. The research, executed by Dr. Bahram Zargar and Dr. Sara Sadr, as PhD students in the department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, involved introduction of novel functions to the bacterium Clostridium sporogenes, enhancing its potential as an anti-cancer therapeutic.

Dr. Ruikun Zhou was announced as a co-winner of the Faculty of Mathematics Graduate Research Excellence Award for the paper "Resolven-Type Data-Driven Learning of Generators for Unknown Continuous-Time Dynamical Systems". Dr. Zhou completed a PhD in the department of Applied Mathematics under the supervision of Prof. Jun Liu in 2025 . Dr. Zhou is joining the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT as a Postdoctoral Associate. Congratulations Ruikun!

Marty Mukherjee has been awarded the Waterloo.AI Physical AI Graduate Scholarship, supported by the Philantra Foundation. Marty is pursuing a PhD in the department of Applied Mathematics under the supervision of Prof. Jun Liu. Congratulations Marty!

Jun Liu, professor of applied mathematics and Canada Research Chair in Hybrid Systems and Control, has been elected Vice Chair of the SIAM Control and Systems Theory Activity Group. According to the SIAM website, the activity group fosters collaboration among mathematicians, engineers, and scientists working in systems and control, and promotes the development of theory and methods for modeling, estimation, control, and approximation of complex biological, physical, and engineering systems.

Professor Liu has also been elected Chair of the IEEE Control Systems Society Technical Committee on Hybrid Systems. According to the IEEE website, the committee provides forums for technical discussion and information sharing for researchers interested in hybrid systems and their applications. It organizes and supports conferences and educational events in the field, including the ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, part of Cyber-Physical Systems Week, and the IFAC Conference on Analysis and Design of Hybrid Systems.

In a recent publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, Koji Yamaguchi, a former postdoctoral fellow, and Prof. Achim Kempf show how encrypted cloning of unknown quantum states can be achieved. As Kempf describes, “This breakthrough will enable quantum cloud storage, like a quantum Dropbox, a quantum Google Drive or a quantum STACKIT, that safely and securely stores the same quantum information on multiple servers, as a redundant and encrypted backup.”

Dr. José Polo-Gómez, a recent graduate of the Applied Mathematics PhD program, has received the 2026 Irwin Oppenheim Award from the American Physical Society. This award, which honours early-career scientists, recognizes Dr. Polo-Gómez for showing that the second law of thermodynamics limits the ability to distinguish between quantum states. He reported this result in a 2024 paper entitled “Thermodynamic bound on quantum state discrimination”. Dr. Polo-Gómez, who worked under the supervision of Professor Eduardo Martin-Martinez, is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics.

Maliha Ahmed, a recent graduate of the Applied Math PhD program, was selected as valedictorian for the Math Fall convocation, held October 24, 2025. Maliha’s nomination was based on her excellent scholastic achievement, her strong research record (focusing on computational modelling of the neuronal mechanisms of epilepsy), and her service to the Math community (including organizing workshops for Women in Mathematics (WiM)). Congratulations, Maliha!

Seven Master’s and eight PhD Applied Mathematics degrees were awarded in the 2025 Fall Convocation. Congratulations to the graduates!

A number of Applied Math graduate students were recognized for their achievements at the 2025 Applied Mathematics and Computational Mathematics Awards and Recognitions Lunch held on Friday September 26^th. Research excellence was recognized by best research paper awards presented to Jiayue Yang, Eric Culf, and Maria Rosa Preciado Rivas. For exceptional teaching, TA awards were presented to  Elizabeth Yackoboski, Robert Bahensky, Juliette Sinnott, Devin Blankespoor, Leonard Korreshi, Zoya Abbasi, Shri Lal Raghudev Ram Singh, Jonathan Befekadu, and Zitao He. Congratulations to all on your outstanding achievements.