The C&O department has 36 faculty members and 60 graduate students. We are intensely research oriented and hold a strong international reputation in each of our six major areas:
- Algebraic combinatorics
- Combinatorial optimization
- Continuous optimization
- Cryptography
- Graph theory
- Quantum computing
Read more about the department's research to learn of our contributions to the world of mathematics!

News
Three C&O faculty win Outstanding Performance Awards
The awards are given each year to faculty members across the University of Waterloo who demonstrate excellence in teaching and research.
Prof. Alfred Menezes is named Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research
The Fellows program, which was established in 2004, is awarded to no more than 0.25% of the IACR’s 3000 members each year and recognizes “outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to cryptologic research.”
C&O student Ava Pun receives Jessie W. H. Zou Memorial Award
She received the award in recognition of her research on simulating virtual training environments for autonomous vehicles, which she conducted at the start-up Waabi.
Events
C&O Reading Group -Felix Zhou
Title: Learning from Coarse Samples
Speaker: | Felix Zhou |
Affiliation: | University of Waterloo |
Location: | MC 6029 |
Abstract:Coarsening occurs when the exact value of a sample is not observed.
Instead, only a subset of the sample space containing the exact value is known.
Coarse data naturally arises in diverse fields, including Economics, Engineering, Medical and Biological Sciences, and all areas of the Physical Sciences.
One of the simplest forms of coarsening is rounding, where data values are mapped to the nearest point on a specified lattice.
We survey applications of coarse learning to regression with self-selection bias, regression with second-price auction data, and present details of an SGD-based algorithm for coarse Gaussian mean estimation.
Based on joint work with Alkis Kalavasis and Anay Mehrotra (https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07133)
Algebraic and enumerative combinatorics seminar-Félix Gelinas
Title:Source characterization of the hypegraphic posets
Speaker | Félix Gelinas |
Affiliation | York |
Location | MC 5479 |
Abstract: For a hypergraph $\mathbb{H}$ on $[n]$, the hypergraphic poset $P_\mathbb{H}$ is the transitive closure of the oriented $1$-skeleton of the hypergraphic polytope $\Delta_\mathbb{H}$, which is the Minkowski sum of the standard simplices $\Delta_H$ for each hyperedge $H \in \mathbb{H}$. In 2019, C. Benedetti, N. Bergeron, and J. Machacek established a remarkable correspondence between the transitive closure of the oriented $1$-skeleton of $\Delta_\mathbb{H}$ and the flip graph on acyclic orientations of $\mathbb{H}$. Viewing an orientation of $\mathbb{H}$ as a map $A$ from $\mathbb{H}$ to $[n]$, we define the sources of the acyclic orientations as the values $A(H)$ for each hyperedge $H \in \mathbb{H}$. In a recent paper, N. Bergeron and V.
Pilaud provided a characterization of $P_\mathbb{H}$ based on the sources of acyclic orientations for interval hypergraphs. Specifically, two distinct acyclic orientations $A$ and $B$ of $\mathbb{H}$ are comparable in $P_\mathbb{H}$ if and only if their sources satisfy $A(H) \leq B(H)$ for all hyperedges $H\in \HH$. The goal of this work is to extend this source characterization of $P_\mathbb{H}$ to arbitrary hypergraphs on $[n]$.
There will be a pre-seminar presenting relevant background at the beginning graduate level starting at 1pm,
Tutte colloquium-Michael Borinsky
Title:Constraining moduli space cohomology by counting graphs
Speaker: | Michael Borinsky |
Affiliation: | Perimeter Institute |
Location: | MC 5501 |
Abstract: In 1992, Kontsevich defined complexes spanned by graphs. These
complexes are increasingly prominent in algebraic topology, geometric
group theory and mathematical physics. For instance, a 2021 theorem by
Chan-Galatius and Payne implies that the top-weight cohomology of the
moduli space of curves of genus g is equal to the homology of a specific
graph complex. I will present a new theorem on the asymptotic growth
rate of the Euler characteristic of this graph complex and explain its
implication on the cohomology of the moduli space of curves. The proof
involves solving a specific graph counting problem.