The Faculty of Mathematics has a remarkable history. From the founding of the University of Waterloo in 1957, and the establishment of the Faculty in 1967, it has developed into a thriving centre for research and teaching in mathematical and computer sciences that is unique worldwide in scale. Currently, we have 6,064 undergraduate majors, 469 masters and 302 doctoral students, 200 faculty and 110 staff members. There are 4 academic departments: Applied Mathematics, Combinatorics and Optimization, Pure Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science, together with one school – the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science.
Our faculty members are widely known for their eminence – two have received the Killam Prize, three have been named to the Order of Canada, and 18 have been named Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada. The increasing importance of mathematical and computer sciences in our increasingly complex world is strongly reflected by the breadth of research expertise among our faculty members, including:
- algebraic geometry,
- artificial intelligence,
- bioinformatics,
- biostatistics,
- cryptography,
- data bases,
- epidemiology,
- health informatics,
- human computer interaction,
- information retrieval,
- information security,
- machine learning,
- mathematical finance,
- mathematical medicine,
- mathematical physics,
- matroids,
- moduli spaces,
- networks and distributed systems,
- number theory,
- operator algebras,
- portfolio optimization,
- quantum algorithms,
- random matrices,
- ruin theory,
- scheduling,
- statistical surveys,
- topology.
Faculty members attracted over $16 million in research support last year, and we have dozens of seminars and colloquia each week featuring speakers from around the world. Graduate students are an essential part of our research program, and they have had great success. Our doctoral students have won annual “best thesis in Canada” awards on many occasions – five times from the Canadian Mathematical Society (over the 16 years that this award has been issued) and nine times from the Statistical Society of Canada (over 29 years).
The University of Waterloo intellectual property policy is unique in that Waterloo researchers, including graduate students, retain ownership of their ideas. This environment has sparked numerous successful spin-off ventures like Maplesoft’s mathematics and analysis software (now used at over 90% of advanced research institutions and universities worldwide) and OpenText, a leading content management software company, evolved from an innovative Oxford English Dictionary project undertaken at Waterloo in 1984.
High admission standards ensure that outstanding students are drawn to the Faculty from across Canada and around the world, with international students forming more than 25% of the student body. Over 60% of our undergraduates are registered in cooperative programs, alternating four-month academic terms at the University with four-month paid work terms during which they gain invaluable practical experience.
The unique Faculty structure has attracted a critical mass of expertise, allowing students to choose from over 500 graduate and undergraduate courses in theoretical and applied areas. Partnerships with other faculties and with Wilfrid Laurier University have further enhanced our ability to offer undergraduate programs in software engineering, computing and financial management as well as unique joint undergraduate degree programs in mathematics or computer science and business. Many of our best students are accepted for advanced research and study at internationally renowned graduate and professional programs. Graduates at all levels are highly sought after by employers and go on to achieve great success in industry, government and academia.
Our undergraduate teams consistently rank near the top in various team competitions. We have won the worldwide ACM computer programming competition twice, and come home with bronze medals in the last two years. We have also won the North American Putnam Mathematics Competition twice, and finished fifth two years ago. In each of the last two years, we have won the Games4Girls competition, in which teams of female undergraduates create computer games.
The Faculty actively engages in outreach and enrichment programs to promote mathematics and computer science in elementary and secondary schools in Canada and around the world. Coordinated through the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC), these efforts include contests, workshops, school visits, and online resources for elementary and high school students and their teachers. More than 200,000 school children in over 50 countries now participate in these contests each year. We also offer an online part-time masters program for high school teachers, leading to a Master of Mathematics for Teachers (MMT) degree.