Google partners with Waterloo researchers

Lin Tan has one goal in mind when working on her research — improving the lives of ordinary people.

The engineering professor recently got a boost for her goal when she was honoured with a Google Faculty Research Award. Engineering Professor Wojciech Golab was also a winner of a grant from the world’s second largest IT firm. Both Waterloo researchers work in the University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“I'm excited and happy they're supporting me,” said Tan, who also won a Google award in 2010. “Google has always been really good at supporting research. I'm looking forward to doing more research and to improving people's daily lives.”

Tan’s software engineering project looks into improving automated software testing. It’s 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 will further enhance the effectiveness of automated testing.

Researcher hopes new tool will help Internet users globally

The Waterloo research projects were two of 115 projects funded this year. Google received 691 proposals from researchers around the world.

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---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 strong ties to Canadian universities

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.”

The grants cover tuition for a graduate student and gives researchers the chance to work directly with Google researchers and engineers. the awards are “one-year awards to support the work of world-class full-time faculty members at top universities around the world.”

Proposals for the Google Research Awards are received in several different categories including, robotics, natural language processing, systems, policy, and mobile.