Seminar

Speakers:

Pavol Chvala, Manager, Systems Development and AI Technologies

Moderator:

Chris Calzonetti

Pavol Chvala started at the University 15 years ago as a coop student in Housing IS, and have been here ever since doing software development, and more recently, managing a team of software developers and systems administrators. During my time at UW, I've worked on many different systems and developed using mostly sane technologies, but every now and then I like to see how many JavaScript calls I can chain together on one line to accomplish the craziest of tasks. The last couple years of my life have been spent trying to wrap my head around AI, what it can do, what it shouldn't do, and how all of this impacts us at UWaterloo.

Speakers:

Jason Testart, Director, Information Security Services

Moderator:

Jordan Barnartt

Jason Testart is the Director, Information Security Services at the University of Waterloo, where he oversees Cyber Security Operations, Identity & Access Management, and Cyber Risk Management. Jason has worked in higher-education IT for 25 years, starting as a Unix software specialist, often tasked with investigating compromised servers running the Sun Solaris operating system. Jason is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and occasionally teaches courses in cybersecurity, information systems, and database management at the post-secondary level.

Speakers:

Yasin Dahi, Learning Technologies Analyst

Mike Li, Learning Technologies Analyst

Moderator:

Jordan Barnartt

Yasin Dahi is a Learning Technologies Analyst for the Centre of Extended Learning at University of Waterloo. He has a decade of experience building software and services to support learning, teaching, and research. His area of expertise includes collaborative, personalized, and data-driven learning environments. Yasin is a graduate of the Master of Education program at Athabasca University, where he focused on Analytics, AI, and Open Education. 

Mike Li is a Learning Technologies Analyst for the Centre of Extended Learning at the University of Waterloo. Over the past decade, he has been involved with university's on-campus technical support, business/data research, and was also part of a student-support committee as a student voice under the Associate Provost, Students. Mike has a bachelor's degree in computational mathematics with minors in Computer Science and English Literature, where he focused on Big Data, Business Analytics, and Theoretical AI. He is expected to receive an AI Governance Professional certification later this summer and pursuing a CIPT certification later next year.

Speakers:

Jason Testart, Director, Information Security Services

Moderator:

Netzach Straker

Jason Testart is the Director of Information Security Services at the University of Waterloo. Jason studied Math and Computer Science here in the late 1990s and has worked at the university for over 20 years. Jason also serves as a sessional lecturer from time-to-time teaching cybersecurity, information systems management, and database management.

Attackers are constantly changing their tactics to achieve their objectives. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a shift in tactics with attackers focusing their efforts on targets where successful exploitation has a profound impact on individuals and organizations operating on-line. In this talk, Jason Testart will provide an overview of the recent high-impact attacks,  how they affect the University of Waterloo, and what computer users can do to defend against these threats.

Speakers:

Paul Dietrich, Systems Integration Specialist, Infrastructure Communications

Moderator:

Emily Goodwin

Paul has worked as a System Integration Specialist for IST since January 2011 and has worked in the field of communication technologies for 21 years.  Paul has been primarily responsible for supporting and designing all telecommunication systems on campus, but has supported other various areas of technologies.  Right before the 2020 pandemic, Paul began to utilize his previous development experience to create a fully automated platform so to provide easy access to requesting, and creating many Microsoft 365 resources; such as Teams, Planner, and Bookings (8248 objects of those types have been created via this system).  Soon after, work began on the creation of what is known as Teams Roster Sync (or TRS) which allows professors to easily request Teams with a Desire to Learn (D2L) course; and performs the synchronization of students. This saves the time that would have been required for professors to manage this tedious task (1.6 million synchronization tasks have been completed). This led to the project you are about to see today, offering a similar experience to that of the TRS. Paul continues to learn and develop his skills in all areas of expertise to help further provide better toolsets to the campus. He also has a personal life sometimes, engaging in time with his family, and enjoying being active by playinghorseshoes and baseball.

TMI (Teams Mass Import) is a new web-based tool that has been custom developed by IST in order to facilitate easy mass membership changes to Teams that you own.  It is known that using the Teams interface to do large amounts of changes can be a very cumbersome task and also does not offer features like CSV imports!  That is the reason this was developed.  TMI is a very user-friendly interface that presents to you a list of all Teams that you are an owner of, in a format of your choosing.  Once a Team is selected there are a host of features available, most notably import.  Currently, you can supply a CSV file (with examples provided!) or a Grouper group to perform the various actions with (add or remove).  The purpose of the session is to formally announce and make available the application to the whole campus as well as provide an overview of all the current functionality that can be done.  There will be a brief Q&A available at the end to take in any feedback to help continue to make this tool better over time to allow for the University community to guide the continuous improvement.

Speakers:

Mirko Vucicevich, Lead Developer, Science Computing; Pavol Chvala, Manager of Development and AI Technology, IST

Moderator:

Christopher Calzonetti

Mirko is the lead software developer in the Faculty of Science
Pavol Chvala is the Manager of Development and AI Technology in IST

How much Open-Source code is produced and hosted by UW staff? You may be surprised to discover that officially it's not much!
We recently ran an initiative to explore open-source licensing on campus for staff projects, establishing a process and set of licenses that could be deployed on campus.

Speaker:

Kurtis Girard, Computing Consultant

Moderator:

Netzach Straker

Sarah McKone and Kurtis Girard are Computing Consultants in IST. They are responsible for supporting Atlassian product administration.

In March 2024 IST upgraded from standard Jira Software to premium. In this seminar, we’ll discuss the new features available with Jira Software Premium and provide on overview of how you can get started using advanced planning.

Speaker:

Ian Milligan, Associate Vice-President, Research Oversight and Analysis; Alison Hitchens, Associate University Librarian

Moderator:

Christopher Calzonetti

Alison Hitchens is the Associate University Librarian, Collections, Technology and Scholarly Communication at the University of Waterloo Library. In this role, she provides leadership for information technology, bibliometrics and assessment, library collections, discovery and access, scholarly communication, and special collections & archives. She is co-lead for the University of Waterloo’s implementation of the research data management strategy.

Ian Milligan is Associate Vice-President, Research Oversight and Analysis at the University of Waterloo, and is also a professor of history. With Alison Hitchens, he co-chairs the university’s RDM implementation working group. Occasionally, he is also a practicing digital historian who studies the history of digital preservation.

Common observations (and frustrations!) about University of Waterloo are decentralization and silos but recent projects on campus recognize the value of bringing folks together to move us forward. This panel will discuss how 3 initiatives are working together, IT Review – Research Computing theme, the Research Computing Committee, and the Institutional Research Data Management Strategy Implementation Working Group to address the challenges of research computing support.

Speaker:

Stephen Markan, Computing Consultant/Liaison for Faculty of Science; Jamie Shigeishi, Computing Consultant/Software Coordinator 

Moderator:

Stephen Markan

Stephen has been an employee at the University of Waterloo for over 30 years. He is currently part of IST and the Client Services liaison to the Faculty of Science. He also knows a thing or two about SharePoint (hint: OneDrive is really SharePoint in disguise). When not puttering with computers, Stephen putters in the garden; and organizes tabletop gaming events throughout Waterloo region via KW Gamers.

Jamie is part of University of Waterloo in IST Client Services working as the Software Licensing Coordinator and an IST Account Representative. She is involved in several of the Microsoft 365 initiatives including the new M365 Changes and Highlights blog as well as the R: drive migration project. In her free time, Jamie has been learning to crochet and enjoys playing soccer.  

Speaker:

Riyin Wan, Information Systems Specialist

Moderator:

Jordan Barnartt

Riyin holds a Master's degree in Systems Design Engineering from University of Waterloo. He has worked as Information Security Architect at Blackberry, Information Security Advisor at Bank of Montreal, Technology Risk Management Director at Manulife. He has gained broad and deep knowledge in network security, application security and cloud security and obtained major security certifications including:

Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)

Information Systems Security Architecture Professional (ISSAP)

Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)

GIAC Web Application Penetration Tester (GWAPT)

Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA)

Currently he is a security consultant at University of Waterloo