In the Faculty of Mathematics, we are always looking to the future and our Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC) is rallying the next generation of mathematicians and computer scientists. As one example, in July, CEMC hosted both the Canadian and Mexican teams for their training before they headed to Bath, UK for the International Mathematical Olympiad. CTV featured the two teams while they were here. We are proud to announce that all six members of the Canadian team brought home medals his year. The team placed 24th overall, and the medal breakdown included one gold, one silver, and four bronze medals. On another front, this week the International Olympiad in Informatics Canadian team arrived for their training before they head to Baku, Azerbaijan for this year’s competition happening August 4-11.
Math is organizing a number of conferences this summer. The Department of Combinatorics and Optimization will host Selected Areas in Cryptography, bringing cryptographers from around the world to campus August 12-16. One of the keynote lectures will be given by our own Doug Stinson, who will give a talk on August 15 about his life as a mathematician and cryptographer. The CEMC will be running two meetings: The Summer Conference for Computer Science Educators brings teachers to campus August 13-15. The following week, CEMC will hold the Conference for Math Teachers here and in Winnipeg August 20-22.
Our researchers continue to bring home awards and honours:
- David Gosset (C&O) was named a CIFAR fellow
- Samer Al-Kiswany (Computer Science) was elevated to IEEE Senior Fellow
- Several researchers across all the units received Outstanding Performance Awards
- Applied Mathematics: Anita Layton, Achim Kempf, Xinzhi Liu
- CEMC: Steven Furino
- C&O: Jochen Koenemann and David Jao
- Computer Science: Jimmy Lin, David Tompkins, Jesse Hoey, Christopher Batty, Daniel Brown, Lap Chi Lau, Lila Kari
- Pure Mathematics: Kevin Hare, Vern Paulsen
- Statistics and Actuarial Science: Stefan Steiner, Christiane Lemieux, Wayne Oldfrd, Ruodu Wang
- Diana Skrzydlo (Statistics and Actuarial Science) and Ed Vrscay (Applied Mathematics) received the Faculty of Mathematics Award for Distinction in Teaching
- Charles Clarke (Computer Science), Gordon Cormack (Computer Science), Olga Vechtomova (Management Sciences) and their former graduate students Maheedhar Kolla, Azin Ashkan, Stefan Büttcher, and Ian MacKinnon won the 2019 ACM SIGIR Test of Time Award
- Graduate students Samuel Jaques and John Schanck (C&O) recently won the Crypto 2019 Best Young Research Award
- PhD student Shihabur Rahman Chowdhury, recent master’s graduate Anthony Anthony, and master’s students Haibo Bian and Tim Bai, and Raouf Boutaba (Computer Science) were awarded the Best Paper Award at NetSoft 2019
- Davit Harutyunyan, a visiting PhD student in 2018, along with PhD student Nashid Shahriar, Raouf Boutaba, and Davit’s supervisor, Roberto Riggio from FBK CREATE-NET in Italy were awarded the Best Student Paper Award at NetSoft 2019
- PhD student Yinan Li (Applied Math) received the 2018/2019 Best Research Paper Award for the paper “Invariance Control Synthesis for Switched Nonlinear Systems: An Interval Analysis Approach” published in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control
- Md Faizul Bari, Michael Cormier and Michael Mior (Computer Science) won the inaugural David R. Cheriton Doctoral Dissertation Awards
- Farinaz Forouzannia, Christian Barna, and Giselle Sosa Jones (Applied Math) received Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards
We continue to share news about research happening in the Faculty. Several media outlets interviewed Applied Mathematics graduate student Mehrshad Sadria and his supervisor Anita Layon about his research that led to a new way to detect autism. This news story has been the most widely dispersed media story in the Faculty in the last two years. Local media including CBC, CTV, and The Record covered the story, as well as over 50 other general publications and more than 15 health- and science-related publications.
As we prepare for the busy fall term, we want to welcome new staff and faculty who are joining us:
- Nadia Linares joined the Department of Applied Mathematics as the Undergraduate Coordinator and Joel Wallman has started on the tenure track as an Assistant Professor in the department, as well as with the Institute for Quantum Computing
- Fangda Liu, Pengyu Wei, and Aukosh Jagannath all joined the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science as faculty members
- Ali Abedi joined the Cheriton School of Computer Science as a Lecturer
- Burcu Karabina joined the Math Undergraduate Office as a Lecturer
- This month Nickolas Rollick and Diana Castaneda Santos will join us as lecturers in CEMC
And finally, thank you to James Thompson and Justin Wan for taking on the roles as the new Co-Directors of the Computing and Financial Management program.
Safe travels to anyone heading on their summer vacation before we welcome students back to campus.
Stephen M. Watt
Dean, Faculty of Mathematics - University of Waterloo