Fall Convocation 2015

Friday, October 23, 2015

Adapted from the University of Waterloo Daily Bulletin

At 2:30 this afternoon, 180 students from Environment and 575 students from Mathematics will receive their degrees. Students in the Software Engineering program will graduate with the Faculty of Mathematics.

Robert Tarjan.Robert Tarjan will receive an honorary Doctor of Mathematics and address Convocation. Tarjan is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, and also a Senior Fellow at Hewlett-Packard. His research is in the field of algorithms and data structures, that is how to represent and process data in the most efficient manner possible. He is the recipient of many major awards, most notably the Turing Award which is the most prestigious in Computer Science. He earned a BS degree in Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.  He has held academic positions at Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, New York University, MIT, and Princeton University.

Josephine Tay will receive the K. D. Fryer Medal, awarded to the graduate who best exemplifies high academic standing and good student citizenship.

Han Zhao will receive the Alumni Gold Medal, for Outstanding Performance in a Master's Program.

Shuntaro Yamagishi will receive the Amit and Meena Chakma Award for Exceptional Teaching by a Student.

Omid Ardakanian will receive the Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies award at the Doctoral level.