Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Mathematics does Convocation by the numbers

55 years ago, a child finds the best vantage point to watch the Mathematics convocation ceremony in the Theatre of the Arts in May 1968.

The Faculty of Mathematics will hold three convocation ceremonies today. 1,286 undergraduates, 161 Master's, and 31 PhDs will cross the stage to receive their degrees.

You can watch the Convocation livestream beginning at 10:00 a.m. today.

10:00 a.m.

Valedictorian Advitya Chhabra will deliver the valedictory address.

Dr. Kenneth R. Davidson will be named Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Dr. Davidson is one of the most accomplished mathematicians in Canada. After completing his undergraduate degree at Waterloo and his PhD at Berkeley, he spent two years as a Moore Instructor at MIT before returning to Waterloo as faculty in 1978. He has been awarded a substantial proportion of the research prizes available to Canadian mathematicians, beginning with the Israel Halperin Prize in Operator Algebras in 1985. This was followed by an E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship in 1988 and a Killam Research Fellowship in 1995. In 2014 he received the David Borwein Distinguished Career Award from the Canadian Mathematical Society for his “exceptional, broad, and continued contributions to Canadian mathematics.” He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1992, a Fields Institute Fellow since 2006 and a Canadian Mathematical Society Fellow since 2018. Davidson is also a highly esteemed instructor and supervisor of 18 Master’s and 14 PhD students.

2:30 p.m.

Valedictorian Carolyn Wang will deliver the valedictory address.

Dr. Trevor Hastie will receive an honorary Doctor of Mathematics. Dr. Hastie is John A. Overdeck Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Stanford University and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He has made seminal contributions to statistical computing, modelling, and machine learning, with over 200 research articles and six books. He helped develop the statistical modelling environment behind the R computing system that we all use today, invented or co-invented many important tools in modern statistics, and authored numerous highly-acclaimed statistical software. Having guided several generations of statisticians and data scientists with his work, Hastie is one of the most influential statisticians of our time.

6:30 p.m.

Valedictorian Vincent Macri will deliver the valedictory address.

Dr. Arlie Petters will receive an honorary Doctor of Mathematics. Dr. Petters received his PhD in mathematics from MIT in 1991. At Duke University (1998 to 2019), he was the Benjamin Powell Professor of Mathematics and a professor of Physics, Economics and Business. Since 2020, he has served as the provost at New York University Abu Dhabi. His outstanding scholarship resulted in numerous honours, including the inaugural Blackwell-Tapia Prize (2002). Petters was selected by the National Academy of Sciences to be part of a permanent Portrait Collection of Outstanding African Americans in Science, Engineering, and Medicine (2006), and named by the Queen of England to membership in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (2008).

Edwin Anderson will be named Honorary Member of the University. Edwin (Ed) Anderson’s career in education began as a secondary school mathematics teacher in Wingham, ON, from 1956 until 1970, when he moved to the University of Waterloo as a lecturer in the Faculty of Mathematics, where he worked until his retirement in 1991. He helped lead the expansion of mathematics contests that now see more than 250,000 registrations annually from more than 80 countries and was integral to the success of the Mathematics/Teaching undergraduate program. For almost 30 years after his retirement, Anderson remained active in outreach activities, assisting with contests, student workshops and strategic direction.

Dr. Steven Furino will be named Honorary Member of the University. Dr. Steven Furino was a faculty member, first in the Department of Mathematics at St. Jerome’s University and then in the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing at the University of Waterloo, from 1989 until 2020. Furino was an excellent teacher who won the Distinguished Teacher Award in 1989 and was a champion of online education in the Faculty of Mathematics. He was also an outstanding administrator, serving as associate dean, undergraduate and assistant dean. Furino’s distinguished service also included educational work in Africa and leadership in the Faculty Association and the University’s undergraduate communication initiatives.

WatSPEED wins two 2023 CAUCE Design and Marketing Awards

Ethan Sparkes, Assistant Client Success Manager, accepting the awards on behalf of WatSPEED in Winnipeg last month.

A message from WatSPEED.

WatSPEED is celebrating achievements in marketing and digital advertising as part of the 2023 Canadian Association for University Continuing Education (CAUCE) awards. 

Every year, CAUCE hosts the Design and Marketing Awards to recognize excellence in the field of design and marketing in continuing education throughout Canada. This year, WatSPEED received awards in the both the Digital Advertising and Email Marketing categories.  

WatSPEED was recognized for a multi-platform promotional campaign that successfully promoted its data programs and for an email marketing campaign that drove a record number of registrations for its Data Science certificate program. 

The WatSPEED Marketing and Digital Sales team with the award certificates.

“At WatSPEED, we’ve made great strides in setting up our organization to support the workforce of the future and build programs that will make a difference for businesses and individuals,” says Sanjeev Gill, associate vice-president, innovation and executive director of WatSPEED. “To win these awards within two years of our inception is a testament to the talent, creativity, and dedication of the WatSPEED team.”  

Waterloo teams among the top 15 at 2022 East Central NA Regional ICPC

This is an excerpt of an article originally published on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.

Four teams of students from the Cheriton School of Computer Science and the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, each with a triad of exceptional coders, competed on Saturday, February 25 at the 2022 East Central North America Regional International Collegiate Programming Contest.

Team Waterloo Black, consisting of Kevin Wan (4A CS/C&O), Andrew Qi Tang (3B CS) and Ramazan Rakhmatullin (MMath C&O), came in second, solving 10 of 12 algorithmic coding problems.

Team Waterloo Gold, consisting of Andrew Dong (2B CS), Kevin Yang (1B CS) and Max Jiang (1B CS), came in third, solving 10 of 12 algorithmic coding problems. 

Team Waterloo Red, consisting of Eric Pei (2B CS), Allen Pei (1B CS) and Moses Xu (2B CS), came in sixth, solving 10 of 12 algorithmic coding problems. 

Team Waterloo White, consisting of Mehrdad Sohrabi (1B CS), Mengyu Yuan (4B CS) and Arayi Khalatyan (1B CS), came in fifteenth, solving 8 of 12 algorithmic coding problems.

In total, 269 coders from 92 teams from more than 30 universities across the east central region of North America of participated in the gruelling programming competition.

Read the rest of the article on the Computer Science website.

Wednesday's notes

"It's time to get your writing projects finished!" says a note from the Writing and Communication Centre (WCC). "Drop-in to The Write Spot on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. for one-on-one support!"

Food Truck Wednesdays, brought you by UW Food Services, will continue this week from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. today in the Arts Quad. Today, the The Funnel Cloud Team drops in (which is kind of appropriate given yesterday's wild weather).