News

From self-driving cars to intelligent voice assistants to smart factories, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming every sector of the economy and the very fabric of society in fundamental ways. The University of Waterloo, a long-time leader in innovation, has been at the forefront of this transformation for decades, but especially so since the 2018 launch of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute – Waterloo.AI.

Amrita Punnavajhala, recipient of the 2021 Mehta-Jenner Climate Change Mitigation Graduate scholarship, plans to research coupled social climate models – math models that describe two-way relationships between human behaviour and climate change trajectories.

Starting Friday, April 30th at noon, 127 Waterloo undergraduate students found themselves knee-deep in data for 48 hours at the University of Waterloo’s 2021 American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest.

Congratulations to Professors Bin Ma and Sue Ann Campbell on their appointments as University Research Chairs at the University of Waterloo. Both researchers are highly distinguished and have made significant, valuable contributions in their respective fields.

Dr. Nashid Shahriar has won the 2021 Mathematics Doctoral Prize. Now in its third year, these prestigious awards are conferred annually to recognize the achievements of top graduating and graduated doctoral students in the Faculty of Mathematics.

When Sacha Tihanyi was halfway through an undergraduate economics degree at Laurentian University, he recognized a budding passion for mathematics. “I had many broad interests in school, but something flipped for me during that program, and I knew I needed to do a whole different degree focused on math,” he remembered. “I chose Waterloo because it had a reputation as the best mathematics school in Canada.”

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Kate Larson and her international colleagues have published a commentary in Nature about the need for cooperative artificial intelligence — beneficial AI with social understanding.

AI assistants and recommendation algorithms interact with billions of people every day, yet they have little understanding of humans. Professor Larson and her colleagues argue that AI needs social understanding and cooperative intelligence to integrate beneficially into society.

Eliciting curiosity — the intrinsic desire to explore and to find new information — enhances learning, promotes information-seeking and improves memory. Understanding how to elicit and maintain curiosity in students could help us design educational robots that stimulate interest, engagement and a quest for knowledge.

A team including four Waterloo students came in first place in the Challenge stream of this year’s Challenge4ClimateAction competition.

The winning team, Team Golden Marauders, consisted of Waterloo Double Degree students Miraal Kabir, Alex Shehdula, Daria Margarit, and Martin Turuta. The team also included Hanna Rao from McMaster University and Kiana Dhindsa from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Dr. Zack Cramer, a Lecturer in the Mathematics Undergraduate Group within the Faculty of Mathematics, receives the WUSA Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. This award is presented yearly by the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA) to professors who have demonstrated outstanding contributions to undergraduate student learning.