The Cheriton School of Computer Science is named for David R. Cheriton, who earned his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in 1978. In 2005, Professor Cheriton made a transformational gift to the school that supports named chairs, faculty fellowships, and graduate scholarships.
News
Janani Sundaresan awarded 2026 Alumni Gold Medal
Recent PhD graduate Dr. Janani Sundaresan has been awarded Waterloo’s 2026 Alumni Gold Medal in recognition of exceptional academic achievements during her doctoral studies.
Conferred by Alumni Relations, the award consists of a 24-karat gold-plated medal embossed with the University of Waterloo’s seal.
Software engineering research team wins ISSTA 2026 Distinguished Artifact Award
A team of software engineering researchers at the Cheriton School of Computer Science has received a Distinguished Artifact Award for “Automated Dependency Optimization for Artifact-Based Build Systems,” a paper presented at ISSTA 2026, the 35th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis.
The research, conducted by PhD candidate Hongxu Xu, recent PhD graduate Zhenyang Xu, along with Professors Shane McIntosh and Chengnian Sun, was one of four papers to receive a distinguished artifact award, selected from 59 artifact submissions across 210 accepted papers out of a total of 888 submissions.
2026 Cheriton Research Symposium poster winners
On Friday, October 2, the School of Computer Science held the 2026 Cheriton Research Symposium, an annual celebration of scholarly excellence made possible by David R. Cheriton’s generous investment in computer science education.
The event continued with an afternoon poster session, where 12 graduate students presented their research to faculty members, fellow students and poster judges.
Events
PhD Seminar • Human–Computer Interaction • Surprise2Refine: Axis-Centered Exploration-To-Refinement for Agent-Assisted Creative Scaffolding
Please note: This PhD seminar will take place in DC 2314 and online.
Yuzhe You, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Jian Zhao
PhD Seminar • Data Systems • Answering Complex Analytical Questions over Heterogeneous Federated Systems
Please note: This PhD seminar will take place in DC 3301.
Xiangru Jian, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Tamer Özsu
Seminar • Algorithms and Complexity • Quality Control Algorithms for Pattern Counting
Please note: This seminar will take place in DC 1304 and online.
Cassandra Marcussen, PhD student
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
When can we trust predictions based on random inputs when working with real-world data? I will introduce quality control algorithms, which accept random inputs while rejecting inputs for which a prediction is substantially wrong, with high probability. I will focus on checking whether permutation pattern frequencies in a given sequence are close to those predicted for i.i.d. data. A permutation pattern describes the relative order of entries in a subsequence. For patterns of length k, estimating their frequency on arbitrary inputs requires exponentially many queries. I will show that quality control for these predictions requires only polynomially many queries.
Based on joint work with Ronitt Rubinfeld and Madhu Sudan.
To attend this seminar in person, please go to DC 1304. You can also attend virtually on Zoom.