Internet services Giant, Google, is investing in cutting edge research at the University of Waterloo.
Internet services Giant, Google, is investing in cutting edge research at the University of Waterloo. Research into electrical and computer engineering recently received a boost with Waterloo professors receiving a prestigious Google Faculty Research Award.
Lin Tan's software engineering project, which looks into improving automated software testing, and Wojciech Golab's systems project, are two of 115 projects to be funded by the world’s second largest IT firm. Google received 691 proposals from researchers around the world.
It is estimated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that software errors cost the U.S. economy close to $60 billion annually. Tan’s proposed techniques extract input constraints from documents automatically to further enhance the effectiveness of automated testing.
The grants cover tuition for a graduate student and give researchers the chance to work directly with Google researchers and engineers. According to Google, the awards are “one-year awards to support the work of world-class full-time faculty members at top universities around the world.”
This is the second time Tan has won the award. She also received one for software engineering in 2010. In total, she has received more than $100,000 towards her research.
“I'm excited and happy they're supporting me,” Tan said. “Google has always been really good at supporting research. I'm looking forward to doing more research and to improving people's daily lives.”
Professor Wojciech Golab’s research will help Google gain a deeper insight into the complex behavior of their data storage infrastructure. Specifically, he will build a tool that can analyze to what extent a storage system serves stale data which is a fundamental concern when multiple users distributed around the world interact through social networking or cloud file sharing applications.
“I’m thrilled to receive a gift of research funding from Google in support of my growing research group at Waterloo,” said Golab. “Collaborating with Google is a terrific opportunity to advance research that is both technically challenging and relevant to Internet users around the world.”
Google has awarded more than $2.5 million in funding to Canadian Universities through the Google Research Awards Program since 2005.
“At Google Canada we are committed to developing new technologies to help our users find and use information,” said Steven Woods, engineering director for Google Canada. “While we do significant in-house research and engineering, we also maintain strong ties with academic institutions throughout Canada pursuing innovative research in core areas relevant to our mission.”
Proposals for the Google Research Awards are received in several different categories including, robotics, natural language processing, systems, policy, and mobile.
Innovative research and technology will be explored at the Waterloo Innovation Summit on Monday April 14 to Tuesday April 15, 2014. The summit will explore next generation technologies on the threshold of major investment, corporate venture capital, and how to build national technology brands with Waterloo at the centre of a global innovation hub.
In just half a century, the University of Waterloo, located at the heart of Canada's technology hub, has become one of Canada's leading comprehensive universities with 35,000 full- and part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs. Waterloo, as home to the world's largest post-secondary co-operative education program, embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research and discovery. In the next decade, the university is committed to building a better future for Canada and the world by championing innovation and collaboration to create solutions relevant to the needs of today and tomorrow. For more information about Waterloo, please visit www.uwaterloo.ca.
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Nick Manning
University of Waterloo
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