David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Jeffrey Zang is a first-year computer science student at the University of Waterloo. At 15, he landed his first internship and completed four software internships before his 19^th birthday.  

Since high school, he has competed in 17 hackathons, where he built projects from an eye-tracking device to a conversational robot resembling former President Barack Obama. He became the youngest co-chair of Hack the 6ix, Toronto’s largest hackathon. With his help, the hackathon garnered more than 1,100 attendees and secured nearly $50,000 in sponsorship from companies such as Microsoft and Deloitte. He went on to organize six hackathons.

Three Cheriton researchers won the Best Paper Award at the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT), a leading cybersecurity and privacy conference.

SACMAT brings together researchers and practitioners to discuss novel approaches for access control, a security measure that determines who can access, use or interact with protected systems. Scanning your badge to enter your workplace or typing your username and password to log in to your Instagram account are examples of access control.

Congratulations to team G-00SE, whose project “Ariadne” won the 2026 Airbus Fly Your Ideas Challenge. The interdisciplinary five-person team consists of Manya Singla (Computer Science); Mahati Tadepalli (Computer Science/Business Administration); Norah Miriam Shibu (Computer Science); Manasa Srivatsan (Geography and Aviation) and Aaisha Pathan (Computer Science).

The annual Fly Your Ideas Challenge is “designed to inspire the next generation to pioneer sustainable aerospace and shape a safer, more connected world.” University students submit proposals to Airbus and then work directly with industry experts to solve real-life challenges.