Alumni on the move and getting noticed…
BMath ’74: John Dark, President of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, is part of the call for discussions by Canadian actuaries on the retirement age.
BMath ’75: Randall Howard purchased Dundurn Press with another Waterloo entrepreneur.
MMath ’78: Slice reported on all the Canadians you didn’t know were Canadian. David R. Cheriton was one of them.
BMath ’82: Jane E. Kinney was mentioned in an article about the scarcity of female executives in corporate Canada.
BMath '83: Lionel Leong Vai Tac is running for office of Chief Executive in Macau.
BMath ’87, Hon. Math ’18: David McKay talks about the concerns he hears when travelling overseas about Canada’s falling position in the world. He and his wife Karen were also the co-chairs of the 50th birthday RBC Innovators’ Ball on September 26.
BMath ’95: Michele Mosca co-wrote a piece about how the quantum threat to cybersecurity could be an opportunity for Canada in the Globe & Mail.
BMath ’05: Peter Szulczewski talks impulse purchases and finances.
BMath ’06: News360, co-founded by Roman Karachinsky, was acquired by PressReader.
BCS ’08: Bin Sentry, co-founded by Nathan Hoel, was in the news because the startup wants to help farmers find a more accurate way to measure feed levels inside their farm bins.
BMath ’10: The Varsity wrote a piece about Ivan Gudov and his co-founders from the University of Toronto in regards to their startup ExploreTO.
PHD ’12: Chatham This Week wrote about Chris Ferrie’s accomplishments as a bestselling children’s author.
BCS ’14 & BMath ’05: Betakit wrote an article about SnapTravel co-founders Henry Shi and Hussein Fazal and how to keep tech talent in Canada.
Kudos!
BMath ’82: Jane E. Kinney was elected onto the Board of Directors for Cenovus Energy Inc.
BMath ’84: Namaste Technologies appointed Kenneth Jones to the board of directors and chair of the Audit Committee.
BMath ’85: Darin Graham was named LG’s Head of Artificial Intelligence R&D in Toronto.
BMath ’85: EQUINIX, Inc, the global interconnection and data centre company, appointed Yee May Leong to the position of managing director, South Asia.
MMath ’90: Aural Analytics, Inc., named Jim Gemmell Chief Technology Officer.
BMath ’90: Chris Turner and his co-author have released a series of books.
BMath ’90, PhD ’93: Doreen Galli wrote a book – Galli’s Keys to Success: Optimize your College Career.
BMath ’95: Greg Fenton was appointed Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at Doxim.
BMath ’97: Startup Canada recognized Bonnie Foley-Wong for her efforts at Pique Ventures.
MMath ’01: Mohammad T. Hajiaghayi, the Jack and Rita G. Minker Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, was named a 2019 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
BMath ’02, MMath ’03: ISARA, co-founded by Mike Brown, opened an office in Europe. Minister Bains also announced that ISARA received a $7.2 million dollar loan from the Strategic Innovation Fund.
BMath ’03: TRN Gold Corp appointed Bilal Shirazi to their advisory board.
BMath ’04: Ray Reddy raised $120 million for his next startup, Ritual.
BMath ’05: Sun Life Hong Kong appointed Clement Lam General Manager, Life and Health.
PhD ’05: Jianwei Niu is the new head of the School of Data Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
BMath ’05 and BMath ‘13: Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang’s company Wish made the list of the Top 25 San Francisco unicorns.
BMath ’07: Matei Zaharia was one of 12 Stanford researchers to receive the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.
BCS ’08: 4iiii just acquired STAC Performance, a company co-founded by Art Hare.
BMath ’10: Eric Myung was appointed to act as Chief Financial Officer of City View Green Holdings.
MMath ’13: Sustainable Development Technology Canada funded Ecopia Tech Corporation, co-founded by Shuo Tan, to map all of sub-saharan Africa.
BCS ’14: Henry Shi was listed as one of the Bay Street Bull Class of 2019.
PhD ’14: Halo named Colin Phipps one of the Top 40 under 40 Chicago Scientists.
BMath ’15: HGGC promoted Hao Qin to Senior Associate.
In addition, the Top 50 Fintech companies in Canada for 2019 included a number of companies involving our alumni. Congratulations to:
- Francisco Lunch (BMath ’03) – Managing Partner, Coinsquare
- Eldon Sprickerhoff (BMath ’91) – Founder and CIO, eSentire
- Robin Dindayal (BMath ’03) – COO Horizn
- Liam Cheung (BMath ’91) – Executive Chair, Mylo
- Kevin Kimsa (BMath ’88) – Board Observer, Plooto
- Rick Hill (BMath ’89) – Chief Architect, Sensible
- Aris Zakinthinos (BMath ’92) – CTO, TouchBistro
In memoriam
We are sad to share the news that Dennis Merchant (BMath ’80) passed away on September 21. The Waterloo Region Record published an article about his love of art.
Henry Crapo also passed away on September 3. During his time in the Faculty of Mathematics (1965-1977), Henry was involved in CKWR, the community radio station, and made significant contributions to the study of matroid theory.
We also recently learned that Janusz (John) Brzozowski passed away on October 24. John joined Waterloo in 1967, was Chair of the Department of Computer Science on two occasions (from 1978-1983 and 1987-1989), and was recognized by CS-Can/Info-Can with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.
