News

Computer science doctoral candidate Johann Wentzel aims to make virtual reality more accessible for disabled people.

“Most of my work is in making VR more accessible for people with motor disabilities or impairments by using the input devices they already have rather than potentially inaccessible VR controllers,” Johann says. 

For example, he looks at how to define meaningful VR experiences for someone who only has access to a button switch and a joystick on their power chair.

Software engineering student Vikram Subramanian has received a 2023 Jessie W. H. Zou Memorial Award. Established by Computer Science Professor Ming Li in honour of his late wife Jessie Wenhui Zou, the $1,000 award is conferred annually to outstanding undergraduate students in the Faculty of Mathematics with the aim of recognizing and celebrating their research accomplishments.

Tiadora Ruza’s journey at the University of Waterloo began long before she started university. The inaugural winner of the Germain-Erdős Award spent many years as a teenager participating in the Math Circles program, a math outreach and enrichment program conducted on campus by the Centre for Education in Math and Computing. Math Circles, Ruza reflects, “allowed me to become familiar with the campus environment and made Waterloo feel like my mathematical home.”

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Robin Cohen has received the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science from CS-Can | Info-Can, the non-profit society dedicated to representing all aspects of computer science and the interests of the discipline across Canada.

Recent PhD graduate Michael Abebe has received the 2023 Cheriton Distinguished Dissertation Award. Now in its fifth year, the award was established to recognize excellence in computer science doctoral research. In addition to the recognition, recipients receive a cash prize of $1,000.

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Ian Goldberg has been named a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Only 10 per cent of IEEE’s more than 400,000 members receive this designation, an honour conferred to those who have experience reflecting professional maturity, professional practice experience of at least ten years, and significant achievements. 

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Dan Berry and his former PhD student Sri Fatimah Tjong have received the most influential paper award at REFSQ 2023. Also known as the 29^th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality, the annual meeting took place this year from April 17–20 in Barcelona, Spain.

A long-term collaboration with academic partners across France has culminated in a memorandum of understanding between the University of Waterloo and Inria — France’s National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology.

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Gautam Kamath has been named a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and a Vector Institute Faculty Member in recognition of his contributions to differential privacy, machine learning and statistics. He is among eight outstanding researchers in the latest cohort of Canada CIFAR AI Chairs to receive this prestigious national recognition. 

Paul Dirksen, a pioneer computer scientist at the University of Waterloo, passed away on April 8, 2023. He was 83.

Paul was born on November 16, 1939 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to German Mennonite immigrants, and grew up in Waterloo. He was one of the first students at the University of Waterloo, graduating with a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics in 1963 and an M.Sc. in Computer Science in 1964. Paul’s professors and mentors Ralph Stanton and Wes Graham encouraged him to pursue a career teaching computer science at Waterloo, leading to a decades-long career.