Current students

When Sacha Tihanyi was halfway through an undergraduate economics degree, he recognized a budding passion for mathematics. “I had many broad interests in school, but something flipped for me during that program,” he remembered. “I chose Waterloo because it had a reputation as the best mathematics school in Canada.”

As a master’s student, Chris Salahub completed a project focused on reducing the risk for cyclists on the busy streets of Zurich. His passion for leveraging data to solve real-world problems is what drew him back to the Faculty of Mathematics, where he previously earned a bachelor’s degree, to pursue a PhD in statistics.

“I like to think I’m a curious person,” said Jennifer Haid (BMath’04), a native of the Waterloo Region. When she learned about Waterloo’s Math Day from her high school math teacher, she decided to attend in hopes of learning about a career path that would leverage her aptitude for mathematics in the business world. “I remember watching a professor deliver a presentation about actuarial science and thinking two things: It was challenging, and I could do it,” she shared. 

Katia Naccarato has never shied away from exploring an unfamiliar path, hitting a dead end, and trying a different one. Before she enrolled in the Master of Actuarial Science (MActSc) program at the Faculty of Mathematics, she was laser-focused on pursuing a career in medicine. Her current trajectory looks nothing like she expected, but she’s confident she’s heading in the right direction.

Samantha Wallis’s enthusiasm for statistics is matched only by her longtime passion for visual arts. As she considers her path forward after graduating with a degree in mathematics, Wallis thinks about how to meld her two interests into a single career. While she hasn’t landed on a definitive answer, she has a strong hunch where she will go next.

Internet users from Canadian rural and remote communities suffer from frequent Internet interruptions, which generally result from various network issues. The lack of human resources, expertise and support make these issues difficult to identifyand fix. Remote areas lack responsive and cost-effective operations or maintenance efforts.

Associate Professor Marius Hofert was awarded a Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Accelerator Supplement for his suggested new work on copula modeling with generative neural networks.

Statistics and Actuarial Science Professor Pengfei Li has received a 2020 Faculty of Mathematics Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Award.