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.
Sina Kalantarzadeh wins Governor General's Gold Medal
The Governor General’s Gold Medal is one of the highest student honours awarded by the University of Waterloo.
Two 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.
Events
Introduction to Quantum Computing
For this term's reading group we will be hosting a study group on quantum tools in cryptography. For the first week, we start with a motivation on quantum computing including the basic definitions and discussion on complexity classes. This will serve as a elementary foundation for the rest of the reading group. A week-by-week plan outline.
Algebraic and Enumerative Combinatorics Seminar - Lizzie Pratt - On-shell Forms and Hypertree Divisors
| Speaker: | Lizzie Pratt |
| Affiliation: | Perimeter Institute |
| Location: | MC 5417 |
Abstract: On-shell forms are differential forms on the Grassmannian which arise in particle physics. They are defined using bipartite graphs with n distinguished boundary vertices. Mathematical investigation of on-shell forms has largely focused on the case of planar graphs, where one can use tools developed by Postnikov in the study of the totally nonnegative Grassmannian. In this talk we develop the mathematics of nonplanar on-shell forms, and explain how they arise in physics and math. For certain forms on the Grassmannian Gr(2,n), we prove a determinantal formula appearing in the physics literature, and give a connection to the hypertree divisors of Castravet and Tevelev.
There will be a pre-seminar presenting relevant background at the beginning graduate level starting at 1:30pm.
Tutte Colloquium - Generating and utilizing various types of negative dependence
| Speaker: | Aravind Srinivasan |
| Affiliation: | University of Maryland |
| Location: | MC 5501 |
Abstract: Various notions of negative dependence arise naturally and/or are desirable in various random processes and randomized algorithms. We survey how to generate and utilize a few such notions of negative dependence, and sketch applications to concentration inequalities, fairness, and approximation algorithms.