Six Ph.D. and six M.Math. C&O students will receive their degrees at the Fall 2020 convocation on October 24. This is the second time that the convocation ceremonies will be held on-line.
Like most entrepreneurs, Michael Egan (BMath ’74) has experienced his fair share of twists and turns on the road to success.
“I was never the type to plan out my career,” says Alfred Menezes, a professor in the Department of Combinatorics & Optimization (C&O) at the University of Waterloo. “It’s always been about being in the right place at the right time and taking advantage of every opportunity.” In 1998 Menezes resigned a tenured position at Auburn University to join the Faculty of Mathematics at Waterloo, where he had previously earned three degrees, including his PhD.
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.