Class Notes

Jennifer Francis (BMath ’84): Jennifer Francis is the co-founder of SheBoot, a non-profit corporation that prepares women across Canada who are founders to pitch their business and secure investment. Just last month, SheBoot launched their 6th season of SheBoot investment bootcamp, bringing together group of women-led tech and tech-enable companies from across Canada.  Read more about Jennifer Francis

Satish Rai (BMath ’86): Satish Rai is the Co-Vice Chair of Forum Asset Management. His company made the Report on Business’s Top Growing Companies of 2025 list. Read more about Satish Rai

Jack Brooks (BMath ’93): Jack Brooks is the Head of Boxx Hackbusters & Virtual CISO of Boxx Insurance. His company made the Report on Business’s Top Growing Companies of 2025 list. Read more about Jack Brooks

Bhanu Kohli (BMath ’02): Bhanu Kohli is the Co-founder and CEO of Rail, a global payment infrastructure that combines traditional banking with stablecoin technology. It was announced that Rail is being acquired by Ripple for US $275 million to integrate Rail’s virtual account infrastructure and back-office automation. Read more about Bhanu Kohli 
 

Anilisa Sainani (BMath ’05): Equitable Group welcomes Anilisa Sainani as its new Chief Finacial Officer. Read more about Anilisa Sainani 

Timothy Vito (BCS ’07): Timothy Vito is the Co-Founder & Studio Director of Snowed in Studio. His company was recently included in the Ottawa Business Journal’s Top 20 Best Places to Work list for 2025. Read more about Timothy Vito 

Marcelo Cortes (Former Student): Marcelo Cortes is Co-founder & Chief Architect of Faire, a platform that gives shops and brands the ability to improve the distinctive qualities of their local communities. Cortes was named one of MacLean’s 40 New Nation Makers. Read more about Marcelo Cortes 

Jeff Mckay (BCS ’08): Jeff Mckay is the CTO of PolicyMe, an insurance company that puts families first with easy and affordable insurance. PolicyMe made the Report on Business’s Canada’s Top Growing Companies of 2025 list. Read more about Jeff Mckay 

Stephen Fung (BMath ’05): Stephen Fung is a co-founder of Archon Systems, a company that develops inventory software for small and mid-size businesses. The company was on Report on Business’s Canada’s Top Growing Companies of 2025 list. Read more about Stephen Fung 

Louis Leung (BMath ’05): Louis Leung is a co-founder of Archon Systems, a company that develops inventory software for small and mid-size businesses. The company was on Report on Business’s Canada’s Top Growing Companies of 2025 list. Read more about Louis Leung 

Griffin Keglevich (former student): Griffin Keglevich is the co-founder of Float, an organization that helps business in Canada to simplify their finance. Float recently launched transactional business accounts for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Read more about Griffin Keglevich

Russlan Nikolaev (BCS ’05): Russlan Nikolaev is the co-founder of Float. Float recently launched transactional business accounts for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Read more about Russlan Nikolaev 

Aditya Jayaprakash (BCS ’19): Aditya is the co-founder and CEO of Blacksmith, a company that makes GitHub actions CI workflows faster and cheaper with optimized hardware caching. They recently raised $10 million in Series A, led by Google Ventures. Read more about Aditya Jayaprakash

Laura Mckay (BMath ’13): Laura Mckay is the COO of PolicyMe, an insurance company that puts families first with easy and affordable insurance. PolicyMe made Report on Business’s Canada’s Top Growing Companies list. Read more about Laura Mckay 

Abbas Abou Daya (MMath ’19): Abbas Abou Daya is the CEO & Founder of Gearlay Technologies. The company made Report on Business’s Canada’s Top Growing Companies list. Read more about Abbas Abou Daya 

Apaar Madan (BCS ’21): Apaar Madan is the Co-Founder and CTO of PostGrid, a powerful API that helps businesses automate and verify addresses at scale. He recently made a generous gift to the University of Waterloo with his $10,000 scholarship supporting students in tech industry. Read more about Apaar Madan  

Anubhav Maulik (BCS ’23): Anubhav Maulik is the creator of SpeedyFeast, a food delivery app. The main purpose of the app is to provide transparent, all-inclusive pricing that eliminates hidden fees for a clearer and fairer customer experience. Read more about Anubhav Maulik 

Waterloo hosted 53rd Canadian Operator Algebras Symposium (COSY), welcoming 100+ researchers worldwide. 

Professor Kate Larson wins Best Paper Award at AAMAS 2025 in Detroit for research on Soft Condorcet Optimization for Ranking General Agents, along with her colleagues. 

Dr Jesse Peterson joins the Department of Pure Mathematics as professor, specializing in Operator Algebras.

Professor Emeritus Douglas Robert Stinson receives the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from CS-Can | Infor-Can for his outstanding contribution to combinatorial cryptography, research, teaching and service.

Math Faculty introduces its 2025 Valedictorians. 

Dr. Nicole Sandra Yaffa Dumont built biologically plausible neural network models of spatial cognition during her PhD, exploring how the brain represents space and navigation.

Anudeep Das, Vasisht Duddu, Rui Zhang and N. Asokan win the best Paper at CODASPY 2025.

Mary Hardy and Gord Willmot are appointed Distinguished Professor Emerita and Emeritus in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science. 

Four math students are recognized for their exceptional achievements during Waterloo’s 2025 awards season.

Congratulations to Jiawen Stefanie Zhu (BCS ‘24) who won the Best Poster award at the Graphics Interface 2025.

Waterloo researchers launch ScholarCopilot, an AI-powered tool that helps students quickly find academic sources and generate in-text citations for essays and papers.

Three recent Waterloo graduates developed an automated solution to speed up and improve accuracy in analyzing blood stem cells for clinical research. 

Dr. Craig Kaplan and Dr. Henry Shum received the 2025 Award for Distinction in Teaching for their expectational pedagogy and commitment to student learning.

Professor Craig S. Kaplan is named 2025 Fellow of the Fields Institute for his outstanding contributions to mathematics.

Rahim Moosa is named a Fellow of the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS). 

Dr. Sepher Assadi, Dr. David Rey Fernandez, and Dr Wenhu Chen receive the 2025 Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Awards.

Congrats to Professor Sepher Assadi for winning the 2025 Presburger Award.

Professor Xiao Hu, with collaborators Binyang Dai and Ke Yi, receives the 2025 SIGMOD Research Highlight Award for their paper, Reservoir Sampling over Joins. 

2024 Outstanding Performance Awards have been named in the Faculty of Mathematics. 

Congratulations to Matthew Regehr, on receiving the University of Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute’s Graduate Excellence Scholarship. 

PhD graduate Aseem Baranwal wins the 2025 Cheriton Distinguished Dissertation Award for outstanding doctoral research in Computer Science. 

Khushee Kapoor, MDSAI student at Waterloo, builds on her family legacy in math and data science. 

Congrats to Professor Chengnian Sun and Hongyang Zhang who have been awarded $60 000 USD through the 2025 Google Research Scholar Program.

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

Waterloo researchers show that AI image watermarks can be removed without knowledge of the waterloo design raising concerns about authenticity. 

Dr. Zainab Abdurrahman, the first black female president of the Ontario Medical Association. 

Congrats to Professor Diogo Barradas on receiving the 2025 FOCI Rising Star Award. 

Dr. Jimmy Lin is the chief scientist at AI startup Yupp, which launched with $33M in seed funding. 

Researchers from University of Waterloo's along with the University of Guelph to study how users respond to legitime vs malicious software downloads in a simulated office setting.

Dieter Schwarz Foundation establishes the Diether Schwarz Chair in the Physics of Information and AI at Waterloo. 

Dr. Eugenia Colafranceschi receives a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship and will join Waterloo’s Department of Applied Mathematics next fall.

Yuzhe You is developing video-game-based visualization to make Explainable AI more accessible and understandable for non-technical users.

Two Waterloo researchers, Dr. David Radke and Kyle Tilbury are using AI to level the playing field.

Congrats to Professor Shai Ben-David has been named a 2025 Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Waterloo co-op students at Faire are building tools to support local retailers and small businesses showcasing the impact of Waterloo’s renowned co-op program.

Dr. Levent Tuncel says optimization shapes every stage of a building Mathematic 4 (M4), Waterloo’s new research and teaching facility.

Congrats to Jun Liu and Maxwell Fitzsimmons on receiving the Oded Maler Award.

Nearly 30 students from across Canada joined Waterloo’s first Climate Mathematics CREATE summer school.

Congrats to Dr. Anita Layton on receiving the Ernest H. Starling Distinguished Lecture of the American Physiological Society Water & Electrolyte Homeostasis Section for her research.

Congrats to Diogo Barradas and Urs Hengartner on winning the Best Research Paper Award at the 20th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security. 

Congrats to Anudeep Das on receiving a $58 100 USD grant from Open Philanthropy to support his research on security of large language models.

We are sad to announce that on June 19th, 2025, Ray LaFamme passed away. 

Carson McIntosh passed away peacefully at the Ottawa General Hospital on Thursday, September 26, 2024.

We honour the memory of James McCarron, who passed away on September 7th, 2025, and the many ways they enriched our lives.

On July 10th, 2025, we say goodbye to Wayne L. Slavinski, whose life and work touched so many. 

Edward Severn passed away peacefully at the Georgetown Hospital. Ed, on June 30th, 2019. 

It is with great sadness that we convey the news of the death of Beverley McMaster.

We announce with deep sorrow the passing of Barbara Reid-Raw on June 24th, 2025.

We are sad to announce that on August 14th, 2024, at the age of 83, Frederic H. Chipman born in Saint John, NB passed away. 

With sorrow, we share the passing of Davender S. Malik on May 13th, 2025. 

It is with great sadness that we convey the news of the death of Ruo Tan. 

Mr. Henry J. Macerollo of Thomasburg, Ontario, passed away peacefully on June 10th, 2025.

It is with great sadness that we share news of the passing of Coleen Burbach on June 13th, 2025.