News

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professors Shai Ben-David and Yaoliang Yu have been named Canada CIFAR AI Chairs. They are among the 34 leading researchers in artificial intelligence and machine learning across Canada who form the third cohort of Canada CIFAR AI Chairs announced today.

Researchers at the Cheriton School of Computer Science have pioneered a new method that could be used to develop more natural automated virtual assistants to help people suffering from mental illness. 

Called SMERTI (pronounced smarty), the new method enables virtual assistants to use natural language and emotional cues that change depending on the relationship and situations in which they are used. The result allows for the development of virtual assistants that better connect with people they are used to help.

Moojan Ghafurian, Graham Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cheriton School of Computer Science, and Kerstin Dautenhahn, Canada 150 Chair in Intelligent Robotics in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have received a catalyst grant from the University of Waterloo’s Network for Aging Research to d

Professor Kate Larson has been appointed a University Research Chair in recognition of her outstanding research contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. Waterloo’s designation of University Research Chair recognizes exceptional achievement of faculty and their pre-eminence in a field of knowledge.

PhD candidate Priyank Jaini is one of 10 recipients nationally to receive a Borealis AI 2019 Graduate Fellowship.

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Shai Ben-David, his former PhD student Hassan Ashtiani, now an Assistant Professor at McMaster University, along with colleagues Christopher Liaw, Abbas Mehrabian and Yaniv Plan, have received a best paper award at NeurIPS 2018, the 32^ndAnnual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.

Professors Olga Veksler and Yuri Boykov joined the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science earlier this year. Previously, both were full professors in the Department of Computer Science at Western University, where they were faculty members for 14 years.

Their research interests are in the area of computer vision. In particular, Olga’s interests are in visual correspondence and image segmentation, and Yuri’s also include 3D reconstruction and biomedical image analysis.

Computer science doctoral student Mike Schaekermann, Dr. Joslin Goh and Schaekermann’s cosupervisors, Professors Kate Larson and Edith Law, have received a best paper award at CSCW 18, the 21^stACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.