News

For this special anniversary year, the Faculty of Mathematics is recognizing 10 remarkable Mathies

The awards committee chose 5 winners for each award this year: one for each year from 2019 to 2021 and two for 2022 in recognition of it being the 20th anniversary of the Alumni Achievement Medal and the 10th anniversary of the Young Alumni Achievement Medal. The medallists will be presented their medals at an event during Alumni Weekend on June 3, 2023.

At the beginning of October,I had the great pleasure to participate in the Wes Graham Symposium. What struck me about the event was that, while celebrating and remembering the ‘father of computing’ at Waterloo, the occasionfelt uniquely forward-looking. Graham Research Fellows shared their groundbreaking work and gave us a glimpse of the future. 

Giving Tuesday is a worldwide 24-hour celebration of generosity

Three donors have come forward to be Challenge Champions for the Faculty of Mathematics.  If 20 people donate to the fund they are championing, it will unlock their gift.

MacKinnon (BMath ’06, MMath ’08) gave to the Fund with the aim of strengthening the culture of entrepreneurship in the Faculty of Mathematics

The Faculty of Mathematics has been a home to bold and visionary creators since day one.

Join us for virtual and in-person events

Alumni events are a great way to stay connected to the Faculty of Mathematics and your fellow University of Waterloo alumni.

Find out what your former classmates are up to now!

Alumni on the move and getting noticed, kudos, what's happening in maths, newly named scholarships, and in memoriam. 

Alex and Heather Hoff share how they’ve used the same approach to build two very different businesses

What does it take to become a successful entrepreneur? 
According to Alex Hoff, founder and chief product officer at Auvik, and his wife Heather Hoff, founder of Amarok IP law firm, there are some constants: good ideas, hard work, and commitment. But for this family, the optimized variable is balance.

One family’s spirit and resilience led them to Waterloo – now they’re helping others

Robert Madej, CEO of PureFacts Financial Solutions Inc., was a young man with a plan. His dream was to study mathematics and start a business, and he was going to make it happen. But his high school guidance counselor had doubts and encouraged him to become a math teacher or an actuary instead, both lucrative professions with job security. Despite the counselor’s best efforts, there was no changing Madej’s mind.

The road to entrepreneurship begins with an idea. For Pooja Viswanathan (BMath ’06) and Joseph Lee (BMath ’99), their journeys began with ideas that sparked during their co-op student work term experiences.  
Viswanathan (she/her), CEO and founder of Braze Mobility, provides navigation solutions for wheelchair users. She has spent over a decade researching smart wheelchairs to make them safer and increase user independence.  

Building on an entrepreneurial tradition

The Faculty of Mathematics’ entrepreneurial prowess is no secret. We’re known in Canada and across the world as a hotbed for innovative new ventures. I like to think the entrepreneurial spirit is embedded in our institutional DNA and thus central to who we are and how we see the world. Our early visionaries—giants like Don Cowan and Wes Graham—were among the first to recognize the revolutionary potential of the computer. Unwavering in their conviction that computing would shape the future and that Waterloo could be one of its birthplaces, they worked tirelessly to bring an IBM 360/75 mainframe—the most powerful computer in Canada at the time—to the Davis Centre.