David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Professor Jian Zhao has received a 2025 Early Researcher Award, which will provide $100,000 in funding to support his research on enhancing software development through visual interfaces and generative AI. The award is matched by an additional $50,000 from the University of Waterloo, bringing total funding to $150,000 over five years.

This funding will allow him to train the next generation of researchers, by supporting one PhD student, two master’s students, and ten undergraduate research assistants over five years.

Professor Gautam Kamath has been awarded $100,000 by the Ontario Early Researcher Awards program to further his research on algorithms and machine learning techniques that preserve data privacy. The Ministry’s amount is matched by $50,000 from the University of Waterloo, bringing total funding to $150,000.

This funding will allow him to train the next generation of researchers, by supporting one PhD and two master’s students over five years.

Instead of typing furiously and constantly hitting backspace, what if you could code by just drawing out your ideas?

This vision is becoming a reality thanks to Ryan Yen (MMath ’24), a recent master’s graduate of the Cheriton School of Computer Science, and Professors Jian Zhao and Daniel Vogel. While at Waterloo, Yen co-developed Code Shaping, an AI-powered software that allows programmers to edit their code through free-form sketches. ­