In addition to a new dean in the Faculty of Mathematics starting on July 1, we welcomed two new unit heads. Jochen Koenemann returns as chair of the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization and Raouf Boutaba becomes the eighth director of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science.
This year’s Convocation was one no one expected. The Class of 2020 graduated without an in-person ceremony, but not without celebration. The University handed out lawn signs for local graduating students, staff and faculty members, we designed downloadable signs in multiple languages for our diverse students and gifs for social media, and the entire University community shared congratulations messages.
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.
Alumni from Canada, the US, Mexico, Costa Rica, Great Britain, Norway, Switzerland and Australia joined together for a virtual celebration of International Women in Mathematics Day on May 12. They attended virtual coffee, multiple panels, a screening of Secrets of the Surface: The Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani and connected on social media with the hashtag #IAmGoodAtMath and on the Waterloo Math Digital Community.
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.”
The University of Waterloo’s first-ever virtual Concept $5K competition challenged entrepreneurs to pitch to an online audience instead of a packed auditorium. Confident in the value of their creation, the founders of Reflect rose to the occasion and walked away with $5,000 to invest in their growing business.
The following was excerpted from an article published on the website of CS-Can/Info-Can, the nation’s professional society dedicated to representing all aspects of computer science and the interests of the discipline to Canadians.
It’s not about building technology; it’s about finding a solution to an existing problem for the research group of Ihab Ilyas, a professor at the Cheriton School of Computer Science.
The first director of the University of Waterloo's computing centre was the late J. Wesley "Wes" Graham. Graham has long been known as the father of computing at Waterloo, because of persistence in procuring powerful computing equipment and his belief that students should have early access to the equipment.