News

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.

Researchers in Applied Mathematics, Jun Liu and Maxwell Fitzsimmons, have received the Oded Maler Award, a distinction presented for the best paper at FORMATS 2025.

The Oded Maler Award is given for the top paper at the International Conference on Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems (FORMATS). This year’s edition of the conference was held on August 25-30, 2025, in Aarhus, Denmark, jointly with QEST (International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of SysTems) as a shared forum dedicated to quantitative modelling, analysis, and verification of systems. The 2025 edition of QEST and FORMATS was also held as part of CONFEST 2025, an umbrella event that brings together major international conferences in formal methods and system analysis. 

Their paper, “Symbolic Reduction for Formal Synthesis of Global Lyapunov Functions”, introduces a symbolic method that makes the synthesis of global Lyapunov functions more tractable. By transforming candidate functions into simplified symbolic representations, the approach supports more efficient formal verification of system stability, which underpins a wide range of applications in science and engineering. 

The Department of Applied Mathematics is proud to announce the launch of the Dieter Schwarz Chair in the Physics of Information and AI, held by Professor Achim Kempf. This appointment was made possible through a landmark philanthropic donation from the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, one of the largest non-profit foundations in Germany.

Professor Sue Ann Campbell was one of two co-chairs organizing the Third Joint SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meetings (AN25) in Montréal, July 27-August 1, 2025. The meetings featured 12 prize presentations, an Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Workshop, and a Workshop Celebrating Diversity, among other special events. The 2025 CAIMS*SCMAI Research Prize was awarded to Professor Anita Layton. Among the minisymposia was one on “Hybrid Dynamical Systems, Control, and Applications” in honour of Professor Xinzhi Liu's 70th birthday and one on held in memory of Professor Siv Sivaloganathan.

Professor Kirsten Morris was one of two co-chairs of the SIAM Conference on Control and Its Applications (CT25), which was held jointly with the AN25 meetings in Montréal, July 27-August 1, 2025.

Professor David Del Rey Fernández was one of three co-chairs organizing the 15th International Conference on Spectral and High Order Methods (ICOSAHOM 2025) in Montréal, July 13-18, 2025.

A minisymposium “Mathematics and its Applications in Medicine and Beyond” was held at the Third Joint SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meetings (AN25) in Montréal in memory of Professor Siv Sivaloganathan, former chair of the Department of Applied Mathematics. There were seven presentations spanning a wide range of topics as a tribute to Siv’s advocacy for interdisciplinary research and ability to bring people together. The minisymposium was co-organized by Applied Math professors Anita Layton and Sue Ann Campbell.

A minisymposium in honour of Professor Xinzhi Liu’s 70th birthday, “Hybrid Dynamical Systems, Control, and Applications,” was held at the Third Joint SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meetings (AN25) in Montréal to celebrate his pioneering contributions to hybrid dynamical systems over the past four decades. A member of the department since 1990, Prof. Liu has advised many students who now hold faculty positions at leading research universities and key roles in industry. Featuring eight presentations, the two-part event showcased advances at the intersection of hybrid systems, control theory, and their applications, with invited speakers from academia and industry presenting new theoretical, computational, and applied perspectives. The minisymposium was co-organized by Applied Math Professor Jun Liu, along with Professors Peter Stechlinski (University of Maine, U.S.) and Kexue Zhang (Queen’s University, Canada), both alumni of Applied Mathematics.

Applied Mathematics members Professor Marek Stastna, Professor Francis Poulin, and Dr. Alain Gervais organized the inaugural Quantitative Climate Science (QCS) summer school at the University of Waterloo, July 21-25, 2025. This event included a series of six QCS seminars held over three days with guest speakers from Environment and Climate Change Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, workshops, and networking opportunities for undergraduate and graduate trainees.