David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Three childhood friends from the University of Waterloo have secured $500,000 from the Y Combinator (YC) for GALE, an innovative immigration software. 

YC is one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious startup accelerators, with an average acceptance rate of one per cent. Every year, recipients receive $500,000 in seed funding and other resources like alumni talks and mentorship. With alumni including Airbnb, DoorDash, and Twitch, YC can help kickstart a young business. 

Peptide identification is a core challenge in proteomics, the study of proteins, their structure and functions. Unlike genomics, which examines an organism’s genetic information, proteomics is far more complex. The proteome — the complete set of proteins produced or modified by a cell or system — varies not only across different cell types but also over time.

DeepSearch, a novel deep learning–based end-to-end database search method developed by PhD student Yonghan Yu and University Professor Ming Li brings new capabilities to protein identification.

Vasisht Duddu is one of 24 recipients internationally and one of two from Canada to receive a 2024 IBM PhD Fellowship. Established in 1951, these competitive graduate fellowships recognize and support outstanding PhD students around the world.