News

Around 30% of Canadians rely on AI for personal and work use, from proofreading work emails to planning trips — but do we truly understand how AI works?

In today’s world, AI may dictate our everyday outcomes and choices more often than man-made decisions. Even the most essential sectors are adopting AI. Self-driving cars, a game-changer in transportation, use AI to sense its surroundings and control its movements. Some clinics are employing object detection and recognition models, a form of AI, to detect cancerous tumours from X-ray scans — and do it at a much faster and more accurate rate than human doctors.

When it comes to cybersecurity, humans are often seen as the weakest link, but new research suggests that with a little help, people can do a surprisingly effective job at identifying malware.

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from the Cheriton School of Computer Science teamed up with University of Guelph cybersecurity experts to test how users, ranging from tech novices to experts, can respond to real-time legitimate and malicious software download requests in a simulated office setting.

Is it possible for Waterloo professor to successfully bridge academic research and industry innovation, especially in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence?

The answer, it turns out, is Yupp.

Jimmy Lin is a professor of computer science and Cheriton Chair in Software Systems, as well as co-director of the Waterloo Data & Artificial Intelligence Institute. He is also the chief scientist at Yupp, an AI startup that launched last month with more than $33 million in seed funding.

Professor Diogo Barradas has received the 2025 FOCI Rising Star Award for his significant contributions to censorship-resistant communications.

Presented at the Free and Open Communications on the Internet conference, the FOCI Rising Star Award honours early-career researchers whose work advances Internet freedom.

New research from the University of Waterloo’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute demonstrates that any artificial intelligence (AI) image watermark can be removed, without the attacker needing to know the design of the watermark, or even whether an image is watermarked to begin with.

For many students at Waterloo, the co-op program is more than just a way to gain work experience, it’s a transformative journey that shapes their career after graduation. This is especially true for computer science alumni Henry Shi (BCS' 14). With a passion for tech and business, he honed his skills through co-op terms at Scotia Capital and Bloomberg Sports, eventually venturing into Silicon Valley.

Generation Linkers, a Technovation Girls Waterloo team, has been named a North American Regional Honoree in the Technovation Global semi-finals.

The winning team, consisting of Sophie Rus, Le Anne Du, and Olivia Guo, won for their app LinkAge, which connects young adults aged 16–25 to lonely senior citizens with similar interests.

Professors Chengnian Sun and Hongyang Zhang have each been awarded $60,000 USD through the 2025 Google Research Scholar Program.

Professor Sun’s project will focus on enhancing compiler optimizations, while Professor Zhang’s project aims to improve the speed and efficiency of reasoning in large language models.

PhD graduate Aseem Baranwal has received the 2025 Cheriton Distinguished Dissertation Award. Established in 2019, the annual award recognizes outstanding doctoral research at the Cheriton School of Computer Science and includes a $1,000 prize.

PhD candidate Matthew Regehr has received a Graduate Excellence Scholarship from Waterloo’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. Sponsored generously by BTQ, Matthew will receive $10,000.