Thursday, November 26, 2020

Waterloo in the red zone: what it means for campus

This week, Waterloo Region officially moved into the “red zone” of the Province of Ontario’s COVID-19 response framework. Being in this red or “control” zone means some changes to campus operations.

Director of Safety Kate Windsor sent a memo to campus earlier this week that outlines what the impact this red zone designation will have on the University:

• In-person classes, labs, research, and other operations will continue as they have been; 
• Seating in dining areas will be limited, and most dining in Claudette Millar Hall will now be take-out;
• For Athletics and Recreation facilities, Athletics will be limiting the number of people who can use facilities at the same time. Physical contact is not allowed in any sport environment. Team sports will not be played or practiced, except for individual skill development;
• Travel between regions of the province, especially from areas in red or lockdown status, should be limited to essential purposes. Work and classes are considered essential purposes. However, managers may want to assess individual cases within their teams.

The University is also prepared to deal with cases of the virus in various scenarios. There are protocols in place to address individual cases of COVID-19, outbreaks and scaling back campus operations. "We will also continue to adapt to any new guidance from the Province of Ontario and public health authorities," says the Safety Office memo. "Department heads, managers, instructors and others responsible for operational safety plans should be prepared for what an eventual shift to the “grey” or lockdown category of the Province’s framework might mean for your area and plan accordingly." 

The Safety Office is working on what a lockdown would mean for classes and labs, and they will provide further guidance to affected groups shortly. If you have any questions, contact coronavirus@uwaterloo.ca.

Teaching and Learning Conference issues call for proposals

A message from the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE).

Submit a proposal for the University of Waterloo’s 12^th annual Teaching and Learning Conference, taking place April 28 and April 29, 2021. Because the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of our 2020 conference, the conference will be proceeding with the theme of “Learning Through Assessment” that had planned for that year. This year’s conference will be held entirely online.

In a previous annual Teaching and Learning Conferences (2014), instructors, staff, and students grappled with the concept of assessment of learning and started to rethink how assessment could do more than just evaluate what a learner has accomplished. Now, six years later, we return to the concept of assessment, aware of the powerful learning opportunities that come with thoughtful, well-designed, student-centered assessment practices. As such, we question assessment’s underlying purpose and focus on the concept of assessment for learning – assessment that is learner-centered, encourages interaction and participatory learning, and provides opportunities for meaningful feedback and self-evaluation. Done well, such assessments give students more control of their learning. As educators, we too benefit from assessment practices that best support our students in their educational journeys.

We invite proposals for presentations, panel discussions, workshops, poster presentations, and an assessment showcase that share your practices and research. 

For more information check out the Call for Proposals website.

Computer Science professors win best paper award

Left to right: Cheriton School of Computer Science Professors Shalev Ben-David and Eric Blais.

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

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professors Shalev Ben-David and Eric Blais have received a prestigious best paper award at FOCS 2020, the 61^st Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science. FOCS and its counterpart — the Symposium on Theory of Computing — are the top international meetings in theoretical computer science.

Their award-winning paper, A New Minimax Theorem for Randomized Algorithms, extends the minimax theorem, a seminal contribution to computer science by Andrew Yao, the 2000 Turing Award laureate. Yao’s 1977 paper, “Probabilistic Computations: Toward a Unified Measure of Complexity,” introduced what is now known widely among computer scientists as Yao’s min-max principle, which uses von Neumann’s minimax theorem from game theory to relate average-case complexity for deterministic algorithms to worst-case complexity for randomized algorithms.

Put simply, Yao’s minimax theorem allows randomized algorithms to be understood by analyzing deterministic algorithms, which is an easier task. This theorem has been used to solve countless problems across computer science.

“Our work on the minimax theorem came about because we came across a problem where Yao’s minimax theorem applied, but it was not strong enough to give the conclusion we needed,“ Professor Blais said. “That problem is known as the composition conjecture for randomized query complexity.” Professor Ben-David and Blais’s contributions to that conjecture are detailed in a separate paper titled “A Tight Composition Theorem for the Randomized Query Complexity of Partial Functions” that was also presented at FOCS 2020.

“In our paper, we obtain a stronger version of Yao’s minimax theorem necessary for our intended application and show that it applies in many computational settings, just as Yao’s minimax theorem does,” Professor Ben-David said.

One important ingredient in the proof of Ben-David and Blais is a new notion called forecasting algorithms. The idea of using forecasting algorithms comes from the observation that measuring the error probability of randomized algorithms is not always the best way to measure the accuracy of an algorithm. “We can sometimes get much more insightful results by asking the algorithm to output a prediction of the correct output, along with a measure of the confidence the algorithm has in its prediction,” Professor Ben-David said.

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

Q and A with the experts: Pfizer vs. Moderna and how vaccinating against COVID-19 will work

The University of Waterloo has a number of experts available for comment on various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pfizer and Moderna announced in recent days that they have vaccine candidates that are over 90 per cent effective in preventing the COVID-19 virus.

We talk to Professor Kelly Grindrod, Canada’s Pharmacist of the Year and an expert in vaccines, to unpack which vaccine will work, the logistics of distributing them, and how long it will take for Canada and the world to go back to “normal.”

What is the difference between the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine?

With the Moderna and Pfizer announcements over the last week, it appears we now have two promising vaccine candidates. Both vaccines use engineered RNA, which is a new approach for vaccine development. Pfizer’s vaccine is the result of a partnership with German biotech company BioNTech. Moderna, which is an American biotech company, developed their vaccine together with the U.S. National Institutes of Health as part of the country’s Operation Warp Speed program.

The vaccines appear to have similar efficacy, with the Pfizer vaccine claiming to be 90 per cent effective and Moderna claiming nearly 95 per cent efficacy. It is far too early to say if that 5 per cent difference is a true difference as these are still early days. However, a big difference worth noting for the Moderna vaccine is that it does not appear to require the ultra-low temperatures to be stored that we heard about with the Pfizer vaccine. This bodes well for both vaccines as it suggests mRNA vaccines can be manufactured to be stable at normal vaccine storage temperatures.

How likely is it that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines announced recently will be effective in preventing COVID-19?

The announcement by both companies is promising but we need to be cautiously optimistic. The press releases shared that the vaccines are 90 to 95 per cent effective, but we need to be careful to avoid committing what is being termed “science by press release.” Everyone is now waiting to see more traditional scientific papers or reports, which will help us understand how much is known and what we still need to know. For example, we don’t know yet if older people respond as well to the vaccine as younger people. We don’t know how long the immunity conferred by the vaccines will last. However, these press releases are a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak time.

How will Canadians get access to the vaccine?

That’s the big question. Both vaccines require two doses, three to four weeks apart. So, for every person vaccinated, we need two doses. The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at very cold temperatures of around -70 C, which requires specialized freezers that are expensive to purchase and operate. The initial Pfizer press release raised many concerns that the vaccine wouldn’t be accessible to rural and remote locations or to developing countries who wouldn’t be able to store or transport it. 

In contrast, Moderna has just announced that their vaccine appears to be stable for up to a month at regular fridge temperatures, and can be stored for up to 6 months at -20C. This may mean that the Pfizer vaccine could also be modified to be stored at more reasonable temperatures, or that the Moderna vaccine may be better suited to rural and remote locations.

How long will it take for people to be vaccinated and life to go back to “normal”?

The hope is that in early 2021 we should be starting to see frontline healthcare workers getting vaccinated. The push right now is to have a broad definition of “front line” to make sure we include doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, but also those in low paid healthcare positions who have high infection rates, such as personal support workers, nursing aids, and hospital cleaning staff. By having a broad definition of “healthcare worker”, the early vaccines would reach the hardest hit communities first. 

The next step will likely focus on essential personnel who have a high risk of exposure to the virus, such as grocery store employees, taxi and bus drivers, transport truck drivers, school staff, and factory employees such as those working in meat processing plants. Long-term care residents and people living in congregate settings such as prisons and group homes will also likely be an early target as these tend to be the sites of wide-scale outbreaks. People who can work from home and are otherwise low risk are going to be the last to get the vaccine—but they are also the groups that have been the least likely to be infected. All in all, it could take a year to get back to normal.

Kelly Grindrod is associate professor; programmatic assessment officer; and Ontario College of Pharmacists Professor in Pharmacy Innovation at the School of Pharmacy. Dr. Grindrod's research focuses on using digital technologies to improve how we manage medications. She is currently examining how patients, physicians and pharmacists share medication information. She is also interested in how digital technologies can be used to change clinician practice.