David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
The Cheriton School of Computer Science is named for David R. Cheriton, who earned his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in 1978. In 2005, Professor Cheriton made a transformational gift to the school that supports named chairs, faculty fellowships, and graduate scholarships.
News
Stuck on that paper? AI tool suggests citations and autocompletes writing
Ever spent hours browsing through multiple websites because you can’t find the right source for your essay?
Fortunately, a Waterloo-led research team has created ScholarCopilot, an AI-powered software that can make writing papers faster, smoother, and less stressful.
Users can write or upload on ScholarCopilot’s interface. When they click on the “search citations” button, it will analyze their content and generate a list of academic sources. If the user chooses one of the recommendations, ScholarCopilot will automatically create in-text citations.
Yuzhe You wins best student paper award at GI 2025 for novel cybersecurity tool
PhD student Yuzhe You has won the Michael A.J. Sweeney Award for Best Student Paper at Graphics Interface 2025. Held annually by the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society, GI is the nation’s top conference on computer graphics and visualization, and human-computer interaction.
The award recognizes Yuzhe’s paper, Exploring Comparative Visual Approaches for Understanding Model Trade-offs in Adversarial Machine Learning, co-authored with Professor Jian Zhao, her supervisor.
Research on long-distance immigrant family communication wins award at GI 2025
Jiawen Stefanie Zhu (BCS ’24) has won the Best Poster award at Graphics Interface 2025, Canada’s top conference on computer graphics and visualization, and human-computer interaction.
Jiawen completed her undergraduate studies at the Cheriton School of Computer Science in 2024. Now, as a PhD student at the University of Washington, her research focuses on interactive systems that can enhance human–human and human–AI collaboration. In particular, she is “exploring ways to help people navigate our multilingual world.”
Events
PhD Defence • Algorithms and Complexity • Algorithmic Tools for Network Analysis
Please note: This PhD defence will take place in DC 2314 and online.
Jingbang Chen, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisors: Professors Lap Chi Lau, Richard Peng
PhD Seminar • Machine Learning | Deep Learning • Continuation KD: Improved Knowledge Distillation through the Lens of Continuation Optimization
Please note: This PhD seminar will take place online.
Aref Jafari, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Ali Ghodsi
PhD Seminar • Artificial Intelligence • Towards Cost-Effective Reward Guided Text Generation
Please note: This PhD seminar will take place in DC 2584 and online.
Ahmad Rashid, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Pascal Poupart