News

For Alan Li, leaving Markham and the comforts of home wasn’t easy. Even though he was miserable the night before he left home, after his first week on-campus, he realized his worries were unfounded. He met a lot of new people and became excited for the adventure that lay ahead of him.

Li chose Waterloo because of co-op and the practical education of a computer science degree. With no previous coding experience, Li felt that he had a lot of catching up to do when he started classes and didn’t do a lot of extracurricular activity beyond Poker Club.

Early in his second year of medical school, Jose Luiz Avilez realized he wanted something different than medical school could offer. In his heart, he knew he wanted to study mathematics. It was a difficult decision, but by 2016 he was applying to universities.

“A friend of mine who studied at Waterloo told me about its program in Mathematical Finance and that it has a co-op program,” remembered Avilez. “I was sold.”

It took Ludwig Lie a while to get used to the University of Waterloo. Compared to Jakarta, it was cold, he was very homesick, and he didn’t feel like he belonged in the program he had chosen.

Lie chose Waterloo because it had the largest Faculty of Mathematics, and it had a co-op program. He knew his interest lay in finance, and once he discovered the Financial Analysis and Risk Management (FARM) program, he made the switch, and his experience improved.

Waterloo-based Inductiv Inc., an AI start-up that uses machine learning to automate the task of identifying and correcting errors in data, has been bought by tech giant Apple.

Shixiao Zhang is this year’s winner of the Pierre Robillard Award of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) which recognizes the best PhD thesis in probability or statistics defended at a Canadian university in a given year. His thesis, entitled “Multiply Robust Empirical Likelihood Inference for Missing Data and Causal Inference Problems," was written while Shixiao was a doctoral student in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr.

When Shanku Niyogi (BMath CS ’94) learned about the Waterloo Student Emergency Support Fund, he knew he had to pitch in.

A result of the collaboration of campus leadership with the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA), the Student Emergency Support Fund provides short-term financial help for students facing unexpected expenses as a result of COVID-19.

Recent PhD graduates, Tom Kelly (Combinatorics and Optimization) and Priyank Jaini (Computer Science), have been awarded the Faculty of Mathematics Doctoral Prize. Now in its second year, these prizes are awarded annually to recognize the achievements of top graduating doctoral students in the Faculty of Mathematics.

“Looking around the table at WATonomous, it’s amazing to see people come together to create something extraordinary.”

“Waterloo is a place where students have the opportunity to try so many different things.”

Many students feel pressured to decide on a defined career path early on in their undergraduate career. Joy Zhang isn’t one of them. The second-year Financial Analysis & Risk Management (FARM) student is embracing the opportunity to explore her options in her time at the University of Waterloo.