News

Professor Mark Giesbrecht will become the 12^th dean of the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Mathematics, a five-year appointment that begins on July 1, 2020. The distinguished computer scientist has nearly 20 years’ experience at Waterloo and he will leverage his abilities as an administrator, teacher and researcher to lead the Faculty of Mathematics.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, researchers and clinicians have rushed to understand the available treatments and procedures to mitigate this rapidly growing threat to human health. The sheer volume of studies published on COVID-19 — in countries spanning the globe — as well as lessons learned from prior epidemics and pandemics, simply cannot be gathered and assessed quickly enough using traditional manual methods during this time of crisis.

Computer scientists at the Cheriton School of Computer Science have developed a new system that helps Internet users ensure their online data is secure. Called Mitigator, the software-based system includes a plugin that users can install in their browser, which will give them a secure signal when they visit a website verified to process its data in compliance with the site’s privacy policy.

In open source software repositories such as GitHub — an online platform for software development where developers store their projects and collaborate with other developers — the quality of a coder’s technical contributions is undoubtedly important. Such communities have long seen themselves as meritocracies where code is king and decisions are based solely on technical excellence.

The University of Waterloo’s first-ever virtual Concept $5K competition challenged entrepreneurs to pitch to an online audience instead of a packed auditorium. Confident in the value of their creation, the founders of Reflect rose to the occasion and walked away with $5,000 to invest in their growing business.

A team of Waterloo computer science students have helped create a web-based data-gathering platform that has been promoted by the City of Montreal’s public health authority to its citizens in an effort to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases in that city.

Professor Florian Kerschbaum has received a 2019 Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award from CS-Can/Info-Can, the nation’s professional society dedicated to representing all aspects of computer science and the interests of the discipline to Canadians.

PhD student Alireza Heidari and Professor Ihab Ilyas at the Cheriton School of Computer Science along with international colleagues have developed a novel tool to manage the quality of your data. Called HoloClean, this revolutionary tool is the first to use artificial intelligence to sift out dirty data and correct errors before processing it.

A team of three computer science students has won the Pasupalak Velocity CS Capstone Award for its entry in the 2019 Computer Science and Software Engineering Capstone Design Symposium, an exhibition in which final-year students develop new products and practical solutions to problems across a variety of indu