How a former Waterloo student is helping local retailers prepare and predict the impacts of COVID-19
With the sweeping arrival of COVID-19, Marcelo Cortes was quick to realize the devastating impact it could have on small, local businesses.
“The University fundamentally changed my core perspectives and ways of thinking. The seeded changes have had a lasting impact on how I navigate my career choices.”
“A Waterloo math degree is not like any other math degree. It is an elite institution.”
“I loved mathematics and in ’78, Waterloo was the place to go.”
“Building a company from the ground floor to an industry-leading firm is an incredibly rewarding experience.”
"I am looking at systems and manufacturing techniques and trying to analyze safety to ensure that it is safe to put this device into someone’s heart."
“You can’t work in hardware or software anywhere in the world and not respect the University of Waterloo."
"Hackathons are the best networking you will ever find to meet new developers."
"Computer Science was just blossoming in the late 70s and early 80s.”
"I enjoy working on practical applications of math."
PhD '88 Computer Science
Ricardo’s PhD research in the late eighties was a key component in the New OED project which formed the basis of the world's first full fledged web search engine, as deployed by a then small UWaterloo spinoff company in 1995.
BMath '85, MMath '87
Peter was an outstanding varsity and semi-professional basketball player who pursued law and business, providing valuable intellectual property counsel to emerging tech companies.
In business, he performed strategic development for VXtreme (bought by Microsoft), for Biztro/Rivio, a provider of web-based business services, and for Overture/Yahoo, from where he co-founded Nutch, an open source search engine.
Dr. Catherine Aczel Boivie is currently Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Inventure Solutions and senior vice-president of IT at Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union. Previously, Dr.
BMath '78, MMath '80
David held executive management positions with software companies ranging across the spectrum of growth stages, including LivePage Corporation, Sybase Inc., Powersoft Corporation and Watcom.
Jeromy Carriere (BMath ’95 Computer Science) is an engineering director with Google leading a number of teams that develop core components of Google's production cluster management infrastructure.
Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
Bill Cook is the Chandler Family Chair in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He received his PhD in Combinatorics & Optimization from the University of Waterloo in 1983. Cook spent two years as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Bonn, and he has held positions at Cornell, Columbia, Bellcore, Rice, and Princeton.
Kim co-founded Side Effects Software in 1987. Utilizing the 3D animation system PRISMS, this company became a world leader in advanced 3D graphics, animation and special effects software used by major film producers.
Kim received the 1998 Technical Achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.
BSc '77, MMath '81
Dan co-founded QNX in 1983 to develop real time operating systems for embedded applications.
He led the company to become the leader in "embedded" technology, with applications world-wide, ranging from manufacturing automation and process control to telecommunications, car navigation and medical imaging.
Ginny Dybenko comes to the role of Executive – Strategic Initiatives for Wilfrid Laurier University with five successful years as the Dean of the Wilfrid Laurier School of Business & Economics and over 30 years of corporate experience.
Hamoon is the director of Studio Y at MaRS. The initiative is focused on fostering a movement of young systems change leaders equipped to thrive in the new economy and drive impact in the world around them.
A notable alumnus of the University of Waterloo is Dr. Abdel El-Shaarawi. After completing his PhD in Statistics in 1973, Dr. El-Shaarawi went to work as a research scientist at the National Water Research Institute at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters in Burlington.
BMath '88
BMath '83
Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
While a graduate, Garth did the groundwork research on Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) that represents what is arguably the single biggest breakthrough in data storage in the last quarter century.
During Y2K, “I celebrated New Year’s early with my family and then, went in to the office.”
Randall Howard is a senior serial technology executive committed to building world leading, high growth technology organizations through the transatlantic “Venture 2.0” boutique VERDEXUS. Randall is "hands-on" chairman at VERDEXUS portfolio investments iotum and Maintenance Assistant.
It was 40 years ago that Ivan defended his PhD thesis in the Department of Applied Mathematics of the University of Waterloo and graduated with a PhD degree.
Ian was the founder of Watcom in 1981, becoming president in 1986.
He provided innovative leadership to enable Watcom to achieve international recognition as technology leader in the programming tools and database segment of the personal computer software market.
BSc '66 (Mathematics)
Jim was one of the original developers of the WATFOR compiler while an undergraduate at UWaterloo.
He was heavily involved in the pioneer developments of interactive computing and personal computing throughout his career (Xerox, Javasoft and Sun Microsystems), redefining the definition of a computer and opening doors to new classes of computer-related products.
“My math background has helped me approach problem solving in different ways, in creative ways.”
BMath '74
Bill's career has been with Lucasfilms and Pixar developing new imaging models that allow spectacular and intellectual film imaging.
His work on Toy Story was recognized in 1995 with an Oscar for innovation in film making.
Terry demonstrated innovative work in language compilers and computer networking with UWaterloo's Computer Systems Group prior to joining Watcom and leading the successful launch of Structured Query Language (SQL) Anywhere software.
MMath ’86, Computer Science
BMath '84, MMath '86
Paul played a leading role in developing Nortel's Cryptographic Centre of Expertise and then in the spin-off company, Entrust Technologies.
He is the holder of several patents and author of many research papers; co-author of the Handbook of Applied Cryptography, the leading reference work in the subject.
BMath '90, Computer Science
PhD '96
BMath '83
In his executive roles at Watcom and later Sybase, David made key contributions to the design and development of Watcom C/C++ and Watcom Structured Query Language (SQL) (later known as SQL Anywhere).
