News

Researchers have developed a new method to make machine learning more efficient. 

The technique, called “less-than-one-shot learning,” can train an AI model to accurately identify more objects than the number it was trained on – a huge shift from the expensive, time-consuming process that currently requires thousands of examples of one object for an accurate identification.

Researchers have developed a new model to help authorities determine which sector of the population should get COVID-19 vaccination first.

If a vaccine becomes available in January 2021 or shortly after, it should be given to people 60 years old and older first, since they have the highest death rate from COVID-19. According to the model, if the vaccine becomes available in the summer of 2021, the priority group changes.

A new app for Android phones can warn users when they are about to forget their device.

Chaperone uses a sonar-type method known as “active acoustic sensing” to detect a smartphone owner’s movements and locks the phone while alerting the owner when detecting a situation that could lead to loss.

Over 20 educators from the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Mathematics came together to develop a new course designed to help secondary school students whose education was interrupted abruptly by COVID-19.

The new online, skills-based course, MTHEL 199, gives Waterloo’s incoming students extra practice in six branches of mathematics: inequalities and absolute values, radicals and rational expressions, trigonometry, exponential and logarithmic functions, polynomials, and introductory calculus. 

Quantum computers will now have help tackling the central problem in their performance – noise.

Joel Wallman, a researcher at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and assistant professor of applied mathematics at the University of Waterloo, has developed a protocol that will help deal with the issue of noise in quantum computers so that they can tackle more complex problems.

Waterloo researchers feature prominently in NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization competition

The University of Waterloo emerged as the Canadian institution with the largest involvement in the latest round of submissions selected by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization process.

As many kids get ready to go back to school during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study indicates ways to minimize outbreaks and their impact on in-person instruction. 

Men who have sex with men (GbMSM) and who get tested at least once annually on average could help prevent a rise in bacterial sexually transmitted infections (STIs), according to a new study.