Letter from the Dean

It is a real pleasure to share the events of the past few months and those still coming, particularly as the Faculty enters into the final half-year of our 50th anniversary celebrations. As we all know, Canada, too, is hitting a big milestone this year—150 years of Confederation. Join us at the UWaterloo Canada Day Celebration on July 1.

Since our Winter issue, golden jubilee celebrations have been held in Bermuda, Winnipeg, and Asia. In May, we invited alumni to join us on campus to celebrate the late Prof. William Tutte’s centennial at the William Tutte Way naming event. At the end of the month we invited grade nine and ten women in Toronto, Waterloo, and Vancouver to Think About Math.

The University of Waterloo team did extremely well at the Putnam Competition, finishing in 6th place out of 568 institutions. Our ACM competition team took top place in North America at this year's Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals. Waterloo team, NeuroGate, won top prize at the Imagine Cup National Finals. Our student HeForShe committee presented the University’s first gender equity hackathon, Equithon. Most recently, the Women in Computer Science (WICS) group celebrated the committee’s 10th anniversary by sharing their stories to help build a more inclusive and supportive environment for other young women considering computer science.

Most importantly, we welcomed nearly a thousand bright, young minds to our alumni ranks. Today, we have 37,144 alumni living in 96 countries! Each new alumnus traveled a different path to convocation, but all share a common experience and unique sense of pride. I wish each of them much success as they enter the next phase of their lives, putting to use the incredible knowledge and skillsets gained during their time within our corridors. We hope that they will always feel they have a home here, wherever their lives and careers take them.

In the meantime, please enjoy our third issue of the Math e-Ties, and stay in touch. We always look forward to receiving your messages or following your travels and milestones via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If there is something you’d like to share for future editions of Class Notes, please contact Kate Dal Castel, Senior Advancement Officer.

Best wishes for a wonderful summer.

Stephen M. Watt, Dean

Faculty of Mathematics

University of Waterloo