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Bob Lemieux heading to Queen's to serve as interim Dean of Arts and Science
Dunning Hall at Queen's University, home of the Faculty of Arts and Science.
Former Dean of Science Robert Lemieux will be taking a leave of absence from Waterloo to serve as Queen’s University’s interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, effective August 1, 2024.
Professor Lemieux will be succeeding Dean Barbara Crow, who will be stepping down from her role in August 2024. Dr. Crow served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science for seven years.
This is a homecoming of sorts for Professor Lemieux, who was a faculty member at Queen’s University from 1992 to 2015, holding the position of professor in the Department of Chemistry and serving as associate dean (research) in the Faculty of Arts and Science.
Dr. Lemieux joined the University of Waterloo in 2015 and served as Dean of Science from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2023. During his tenure as Dean of Science, Lemieux initiated a modernization master plan for the Science building infrastructure on the University’s south campus, and the design of a new Science Centre for Innovation and Physics Complex. He created a Dean’s Undergraduate Teaching Innovation Fund to support the development of active-learning strategies, oversaw the installation of the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Chair in Astrophysics, and led the development of the Centre for Eye and Vision Research, a collaboration with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University that performs ground-breaking research in critical areas for vision health. He led the Faculty during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Lemieux completed his BA (1984) at the Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, and his PhD (1989) at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois. As a scientist, Lemieux established a multi-disciplinary research program in the chemistry of organic materials that is recognized internationally for its innovative approaches to the design of compounds that form or induce ferroelectric liquid crystal phases found in high-performance microdisplay applications. His contributions to the field of liquid crystals research were recognized by the International Liquid Crystal Society with the 2012 Samsung Mid-Career Award and, earlier in his career, by an Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award (2000) and one of the inaugural Queen’s Chancellor’s Research Awards (1999).
“I would like to thank Dr. Lemieux for taking on this important role at Queen’s during what are challenging times across the post-secondary sector,” said Principal and Vice-Chancellor Patrick Deane in the Queen’s Gazette article announcing the leadership transition. “His previous experience here at Queen’s and, more recently, as dean of a large and prestigious faculty at Waterloo will benefit us immensely as we work together to balance our operating budget over the next year and into the future.”
Roadblocks that lead to beautiful destinations
This is an excerpt of an article published in the 2024 issue of Waterloo Magazine: Happiness.
After experiencing a roadblock in his final year of undergraduate studies, Chris Wilson (BSc ’21) decided to pursue a full-time career as a DJ.
That decision changed his life in unexpected ways, and taught him that leaning into your passion can lead to unimaginable opportunities.
Learn more about Chris and his unconventional journey.
Gautam Kamath and colleagues win 2024 Caspar Bowden PET Award
A version of this story appeared on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.
Professor Gautam Kamath, along with his colleagues Professor Clément Canonne at the University of Sydney and Thomas Steinke, a Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, have been awarded the 2024 Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. The prestigious recognition was given to the team for their paper, “The Discrete Gaussian for Differential Privacy,” research that was presented initially at NeurIPS 2020 and published in the Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality.
Dr. Kamath is an Assistant Professor at the Cheriton School of Computer Science and is a member of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI). He is also a Faculty Member at the Vector Institute and in 2023 was named a Canada CIFAR AI Chair in recognition of his contributions to differential privacy, machine learning and statistics. He obtained his PhD and SM degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
He leads The Salon, a research group of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergrads.
The Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies, established in 2003, recognizes researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to the theory, design, implementation, or deployment of privacy enhancing technologies. Presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, the award includes a $3,000 USD cash prize and a monument.
“Congratulations to Gautam and his colleagues Clément and Thomas on their receiving this prestigious PET Award,” said Raouf Boutaba, University Professor and Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science. “Their groundbreaking work in differential privacy was quickly adopted and has already seen significant real-world impact. It was deployed in the 2020 US Census as the key primitive underlying the Disclosure Avoidance System, the most high-profile deployment of differential privacy to date.”
Key contribution and impact
This research introduced a new mechanism for releasing data subject to differential privacy. The algorithm developed by the research team was deployed in the 2020 US Census, protecting the confidential data of more than 300 million people in the United States.
“This discrete Gaussian paper is one of the most important papers for differential privacy deployment of all time,” wrote Daniel Kifer, Professor of Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University, in his nomination statement. “It provides exact and provably secure algorithms for sampling from the discrete Laplace and discrete Gaussian distributions. There are very few papers that go from theory to practice, and this one was adopted right away and had immense practical impact.”
Read the full story on the School of Computer Science website.
Participants needed for Writing and Communication Centre grad student focus groups
A message from the Writing and Communication Centre (WCC).
The Writing and Communication Centre (WCC) wants to hear from you about your experience and needs as a graduate student! We're looking for your feedback about three potential new program models to support graduate students in developing their communication skills throughout the entire life cycle of their graduate programs.
We invite graduate students to participate in online focus groups to respond to and help shape these proposed new programs. Focus group participants will receive an invitation to a Teams meeting the day before the session.
Participants will be entered into a draw to win one of four $25 gift cards.
Share your experience to shape future WCC support for graduate students!