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Recent graduates, Jun Yan (Pure Mathematics and Combinatorics & Optimization) and Jameson Weng (Computer Science) have been awarded the Alumni Gold Medal and Governor General’s Silver Medal, respectively. 

The prestigious medals were awarded to the undergraduate students after they attained the highest academic standing during their degrees.

With some basic English, Andres Garcia Rodriguez left his family and home in Mexico to finish high school. He arrived first in Vancouver, attended a camp to improve his English. After he learned that there was a spot at a high school in Toronto, Rodriguez moved across the country.

Kerthanan Srikantharajah has always gone above and beyond. Whatever he could do to improve where he studied or where he worked – he would do it. That included doing as much as he could in one degree. Srikantharajah leaves Waterloo with a BMath, Honours in Actuarial Science with a Finance option, Joint Honours in Statistics and a minor in Computer Science.

To graduate in time, it meant he sometimes had to overload his courses. He added a sixth course some terms and took one or two classes during co-op terms.

Lily Wang always wanted to be an academic. When she was younger, she was involved in several math outreach events. This involvement introduced Lily to the University of Waterloo through the contests offered by the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computer Science (CEMC).

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.

University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Mathematics professor Marek Stastna will serve as President of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS). Stastna, a member of the water institute, will lead this important organization that promotes meteorology and oceanography in Canada and serves the interests of meteorologists, climatologists, oceanographers, and limnologists hydrologists, and cryospheric scientists. 

Cheriton School of Computer Science Research Professor Maura R. Grossman was one of eight recipients of a Faculty Teaching or Service Award from York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School.

These prestigious awards are conferred to faculty members who bring out the best in Osgoode Hall Law School’s students and its community, inspiring them with their spirit of leadership and their dedication.

Women in Computer Science (WiCS) has received $90,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s PromoScience Program to establish Girls Mean Business. This new WiCS outreach program will encourage girls and young women in grades 6 to 12 to explore technology and to develop their entrepreneurial skills.