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Three Waterloo computer science professors are at the forefront of two new research initiatives that are developing cutting-edge, inclusive, and trustworthy AI systems.

The inaugural research initiatives — Solution Networks — are funded through the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s (CIFAR) Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI) Research Program. In 2024, the federal government launched the CAISI Research Program as part of its AI safety strategy.

To kick off Global Entrepreneurship Week, UWaterloo is highlighting standout entrepreneurs. Among this list is Rastin Rassoli, a joint computer science and psychology student. 

Research from the Cheriton School of Computer Science is making inroads on one of the biggest problems in theoretical computer science. But the way to do it, according to Cameron Seth, a PhD candidate working in the field of algorithmic approximation, is by breaking the problem down into smaller pieces.

“Everyone working in computer science and mathematics knows about the ‘P vs. NP’ problem,” Cameron says. “It’s one of the notorious Millennium Prize Problems: so famous and so difficult that solving one will earn you a million dollars.”

Professors Meng Xu and Sihang Liu have received $254,116 in funding from the National Cybersecurity Consortium, a federally incorporated not-for-profit organization committed to advancing Canada’s cybersecurity ecosystem.

Their project, Securing LLM Agents Against Malicious or Vulnerable Tools, aims to identify and mitigate security risks in agentic systems — AI systems capable of making autonomous decisions and taking actions to achieve specific goals.

Four teams of algorithmic programmers from the University of Waterloo placed within the top 10 at the 2025 ICPC East Central North America contest, held on November 9 at the University of Windsor.

Competing against 86 teams from universities across east central North America, Waterloo’s trios of programmers placed second, third, sixth and ninth at the 2025 ECNA, underscoring the university’s long-standing strength in competitive programming.

What if your gym routine consisted of gliding across a forest, skewing fruits like a ninja, or racing on a Formula 1 track?   

That’s the vision behind Hiro, a Waterloo-based startup that is gamifying physiotherapy exercises for children with disabilities — by including people with disabilities at the research’s core.  

A quiet lab from the outside, pure chaos from within — the trains lab, where trains whir across miniature tracks, and students spend countless hours working away.

CS452: Real-Time Programming is a renowned CS course, notorious for its difficulty but fondly remembered for the deep sense of community it fosters among those who take it.

Professor Chengnian Sun and his collaborators Vu Le and Zhendong Su have received the Most Influential Paper Award at OOPSLA 2025, part of the ACM SIGPLAN SPLASH conference.

Their paper, Finding Deep Compiler Bugs via Guided Stochastic Program Mutation, presented originally at OOPSLA 2015, was recognized for introducing a novel Equivalence Modulo Inputs mutation strategy that exposed previously undetected bugs in production compilers.

“Computers loom large in the world of tomorrow,” declared an October 1968 article in the University of Waterloo Quarterly. “They will help educate children, run complex industrial plants, revolutionize the communications industry; they will drastically alter the way we shop for food, clothing and other merchandise.”

“I didn’t want to go to Waterloo,” Helen Dong says with a grin. “My older brother went here, and even though I look up to him I always wanted to do my own thing. But my mom convinced me I should go, and I’m so, so glad I did.”

Dong is this year’s winner of the K. D. Fryer Gold Medal, which is given to a student in the Mathematics Faculty each year who exemplifies both high academic standing and good citizenship.