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Stephen M. Watt is Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.  He previously held the title of Distinguished University Professor at Western University where he served for periods as Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra. Prior to this, he held positions at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights (USA) and INRIA and the University of Nice (France). 

Professor Watt’s areas of research include algorithms and systems for computer algebra, programming languages and compilers, mathematical handwriting recognition and document analysis. He was one of the original authors of the Maple and Axiom computer algebra systems, principal architect of the Aldor programming language and its compiler at IBM Research, and is co-author of the MathML and InkML W3C standards.

Watt was a co-founder of Maplesoft in 1988 and served on its board of directors from 1998 to 2009. He served on the board of directors of the Descartes Systems Group (TSE:DSG, NASDAQ:DSGX) from 2001 to 2015, including two periods as Board Chair. He presently serves on the boards of the Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd and of the McMichael Canadian Art Foundation.

Professor Watt is the recipient of numerous distinctions, including Doctor honoris causa from the University of the West (Romania), the J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation (Waterloo) and the Outstanding Innovation Award (IBM).