Welcome!

We are celebrating 40 years of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo on Sep 29, 2007. Please see the event guide for further details. On the registration page you are able to register and find more information about the events that will happen for the 40th anniversary.

You may also wish to check out the Cheriton Research Symposium on Friday September 28th

Webcast

You can view the presentations here via webcast

Message from the Director

This year we are celebrating two milestones, the University of Waterloo's 50th and the Computer Science's 40th anniversaries. These celebrations acknowledge the key role of the past in putting UW on the academic map as an innovative and world-class research institution. Computer science is a new academic field in the grand scheme of things, so for UW to be celebrating its 40th anniversary is a big event. It means we were pioneers in the field and have many significant accomplishments to our credit, among them:

• the development of the WATFOR and WATFIV compilers, which were critically important in training a whole generation of programmers;
• the development of the Maple symbolic computation system, now one of the leading software products in its domain; and
• the digitization of Oxford English Dictionary, which was the first major research and development project in electronic publishing and digital libraries.

The David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science is one of the leading computer science units in the world. It is also the largest, with 1700 undergraduate students, close to 300 graduate students, 80 faculty members, and over 50 staff.  We produce about 400 graduates each year (undergraduate and graduate) who serve in many of the top academic institutions, industrial research laboratories, industries, and various public and private institutions. Our research is recognized world-wide – a study by Science Watch in 2005 identified our research as having the most scientific impact among 46 Canadian computer science units. Our research is both relevant and practical – about 24% of all university spin-off companies in Canada are from UW and Computer Science plays a prominent role in many of these.

In our 40th year, we celebrate our past accomplishments, and look to the future with excitement and anticipation. Our goal is to continually improve our performance in accomplishing our academic mission. We will continue to push the envelope in finding new methodologies and ways of teaching computer science. Our students, who are some of the best in North America, deserve our best efforts in teaching while being continually challenged to improve themselves. We will diversify our research by pushing the frontiers of fundamental information technologies, and ensuring that computer science plays its proper role in other science and engineering disciplines. Finally, we will continue to play a major role in the community by ensuring that what we do improves the world we live in. As information technologies become pervasive in our lives, there are additional responsibilities for computer scientists to address the world's problems.

We hope the next 40 years of Computer Science at UW are going to be as thrilling and successful as the first 40. Why not!...

M. Tamer Özsu
Director

Accomodations

For hotel accommodations contact: Waterloo Hotel (519) 885-2626

Contact

If you have any questions or comments please contact us.