The fourth annual Jessie W.H. Zou Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research will be awarded to graduating students Rutger Campbell and Melanie Chanona at convocation on June 12.
Rutger was nominated by Peter Nelson, with whom he worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization. He is completing a Bachelor of Mathematics degree in Pure Mathematics and Combinatorics and Optimization.
Melanie was nominated by Applied Mathematics Professor Francis Poulin and Physics Professor Robert Mann. She is graduating with a Bachelor of Mathematics degree in mathematical physics.
[Pictured above, Ian Goulden, Dean of Mathematics, Eric Langlois, Ritvik Ramkumar, Rutger Campbell, and M. Tamer Özsu, Associate Dean, Research]
Strong nominations in support of Robert Gooding-Townsend, Eric Langlois and Ritvik Ramkumar were also put forward.
Congratulations to these outstanding students!
About the Jessie W.H. Zou Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research
Professor Ming Li and his family have created this award in honour and memory of his late wife, Jessie Wenhui Zou.
Jessie was born August 27, 1968 in Wuhan, China. She received a PhD degree from Wuhan University in physics when she was 26 years old. Jessie loved the field of finance and continued to pursue her studies and graduated from the University of Waterloo’s statistical finance master’s program in 2000. During this time, she also studied computer science at Waterloo and took a course in Java programming (CS 134). Upon graduation, she worked at the Bank of Montreal, specializing in risk control management.
With this award, the family wishes to support research activities at the undergraduate level within the Faculty of Mathematics to carry on Jessie’s passion for education.
The Jessie W.H. Zou Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research is valued at $1,000 and presented annually to an undergraduate student enrolled in his or her final year of any program within the Faculty of Mathematics. Students must have demonstrated excellence in research and have been nominated by a faculty member who has supervised that research. The awardee is chosen by the Faculty of Mathematics Research Advisory Committee, chaired by the associate dean, research.
See past awardees and nominees: