Remembering Scott Vanstone and tracing his connections, influence and career
In 1972, Scott Vanstone (BMath '70, MMath '71, PhD '74) walked into Ron Mullin’s (MA '60, PhD '64) office and told him he wanted to be his student. Originally, Scott started studying chemistry at the University of Waterloo, but switched to math.
“While working as an instructional support assistant (ISA), I remember the first time a professor asked for a volunteer to teach a lecture while he was at a conference,” remembers Josué Kurke. “My hand shot up. I donned a professorial kind of jacket with the elbow patches and went all out. Over time, I’ve realized that I feel most at home in front of a classroom. I want to spend my career talking to people about math.”
The University of Waterloo emerged as the Canadian institution with the largest involvement in the latest round of submissions selected by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization process.
Jochen Koenemann, Kanstantsin Pashkovich and Natig Tofigzade were announced the recipients of the SAGT 2020 Best Paper Award for their paper "Approximating Stable Matchings with Ties of Bounded Size".
The C&O department is very pleased to welcome four new faculty members, Assistant Professors Logan Crew, Stephen Melczer, Oliver Pechenik and Sophie Spirkl.
On July 1, 2020, Professor Jochen Koenemann begins a two-year term as chair of the Combinatorics and Optimization (C&O) department.
Congratulations to the researchers in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization who have been awarded a 2019 Outstanding Performance Award announced by Vice-President, Academic and Provost Jim Rush.
Three Ph.D. and four M.Math. C&O students will receive their degrees at the Spring 2020 convocation on June 19. This is the first time at the University of Waterloo that the convocation ceremonies will be held on-line. Students, and their family and friends, will also be invited to attend an in-person convocation ceremony when it is safe to do so.
William Dugan (M.Math.) and Tom Kelly (Ph.D.) will be recognized as University Finalists for the Governor General's Gold Medal at the Spring 2020 convocation ceremonies on June 19.