Our people

Yousra Aafer joined the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science on January 1, 2020 as an Assistant Professor.

Yousra was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University under the supervision of Professor Xiangyu Zhang before her appointment at the Cheriton School of Computer Science. Her research interests span the areas of systems security and software engineering, specifically focusing on mobile and smart device security. 

She received her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Syracuse University and was advised by Professor Wenliang Du. Her previous research mainly tackled Android security.

• Ph.D., University of British Columbia (2013)
• M.Sc., University of British Columbia (2008)
• B.Sc., Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan (2003)

• Leverage advances in networking, processing, and storage devices to improve systems performance and efficiency
• Optimize the modern data center stack using domain specific optimizations
• Build a software stack to facilitate building efficient cloud applications using new cloud paradigms (e.g., serverless, cloud-native, and disaggregated architectures)

Samer Al-Kiswany Publications

• Ph.D., University of Waterloo, Canada (1998)
• M.Sc., Syracuse University, United States of America (1989)
• B.Tech., Indian Institute of Technology, India (1988)

• Systems security broadly, including topics like the development and use of novel platform security features, applying cryptographic techniques to design secure protocols for distributed systems, applying machine learning techniques to security/privacy problems, and understanding/addressing the security and privacy of machine learning applications themselves

N. Asokan Publications

• Ph.D., Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania (2018)
• B.Sc., Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology (2013)

• Theoretical foundations of big data analysis, in particular sublinear algorithms and lower bounds in various models of computation for processing massive datasets such as streaming, distributed communication, massively parallel computation, and sublinear time algorithms
• Algorithmic graph theory, communication complexity, online algorithms, and algorithmic game theory

Sepehr Assadi on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Maryland, United States (1992)
• M.Sc., University of Maryland, United States (1988)
• B.Sc., College of William and Mary, United States (1985)

• Analysis of large distributed software systems and visualization of analysis results
• Semantics of composition of software features, and detection and resolution of feature interactions

Joanne Atlee on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Waterloo (2019)
• B.A.Sc., McMaster University (2012)
• M.A., McMaster University (1991)
• B.A., McMaster University (1990)

• Research interests focus on optimizing input and interaction techniques, primarily for multi-touch systems, mobile and personal devices
• Teaching interests include software engineering methodology; reducing software complexity; software design, particularly the design of interactive systems

Jeff Avery on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal (2021)
• M.Sc., Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal (2016)
• B.Sc., Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal (2014)

• Network traffic analysis and obfuscation, with applications to Internet censorship circumvention and anonymous communication
• Security of programmable network infrastructures, with applications to network threat detection, mitigation, and recovery
• Digital forensics and information hiding

Diogo Barradas on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of British Columbia (2010)
• B.C.Sc., University of Manitoba (2004)

• Computer graphics and scientific computing
• Physics-based numerical simulation of fluid and solid phenomena, for applications in computer animation, visual effects, game development, and interactive virtual environments

Christopher Batty on Google Scholar

• M.Math., University of Waterloo (1990)
• B.A., Goshen College, United States (1983)

• Byron is course coordinator for CS135, our largest introductory CS course. He invests significant time and energy in keeping it up-to-date.
• Byron is also the author of OAT, software designed to make UW’s academic advisors and other decision-makers more productive and effective.

• Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, United States (1974)
• B.Sc., Brown University, United States (1969)

• Requirements engineering (RE) in the specific, software engineering (SE) in general
• Within RE, issues, including human behavior, that affect the adoption of and the effectiveness of RE in the software development lifecycle
• In general, why RE and SE are not working the way they’re supposed to

Daniel Berry on DBLP

• Ph.D., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, United States (1997)
• Dipl.-Math., Technical University of Berlin, Germany (1996)

• Graph Drawing: How to map a graph to geometric objects (such as points in the planes for vertices and line segments for edges), under some objective function?
• Algorithms for near-planar graphs: If we know that a graph has special properties, how can we exploit this to make algorithms faster?

Therese Biedl on DBLP

• Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, United States
• M.Sc., McGill University
• B.Math., University of Waterloo

• Randomized and sublinear-time algorithms
• Complexity theory

Eric Blais on DBLP

• Ph.D., Université de Pierre et Marie Curie (now Sorbonne Université), France (1994)
• M.Sc., Université de Pierre et Marie Curie (now Sorbonne Université), France (1990)
• B.Sc., Badji Mokhtar Annaba University, Algeria (1988)

• Management of resources, systems and services in wired and wireless networks
• Current applications include network virtualization, software-defined networking, network function virtualization, cloud and edge computing, 5G and beyond mobile communications networks, blockchains, and cybersecurity

Raouf Boutaba on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Toronto (1994)
• M.Math., University of Waterloo (1985)
• B.Sc., University of Saskatchewan (1983)

• Performance Evaluation, Computer Systems and Networking
• Wireless Networking, The Internet of Things
• Sports Analytics

Tim Brecht Publications

• Ph.D., Cornell University, United States (2000)
• M.Sc., Cornell University, United States (1999)
• B.Sc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States (1995)

• Computational creativity: using computers to create artifacts that if humans created them, we would call them creative
• Music Information retrieval: using techniques from computer science to understand the information found in music (recordings, scores, lyrics)
• Bioinformatics: designing algorithms to compare, analyze, and find information in biological sequences

Dan Brown on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Toronto (2017)
• M.Sc., University of Toronto (2012)
• B.Sc., York University (2010)

• Parallel, concurrent and distributed data structures, especially lock-free ones
• Algorithms for recent technologies like non-volatile memory, transactional memory, remote direct memory access (RDMA)
• High performance memory allocators and safe reclamation for concurrent software
• Designing novel CPU instructions for thread synchronization, memory management, cache communication, etc.

Trevor Brown on DBLP

• Ph.D., University of British Columbia (2015)
• M.Math., University of Waterloo (2010)
• B.Math., University of Waterloo (2009)

• Introductory Imperative Programming (Python, C)
• Computational Logic
• Algorithms and Algorithmic Design

• Ph.D., University of Manitoba (1985)
• M.Sc., University of Manitoba (1978)
• B.Sc., University of Manitoba (1976)

• Programming languages, specializing in concurrency, polymorphism, and persistence
• Visualization and debugging of concurrent programs
• Persistent storage-management using memory mapping
• Concurrent storage-allocation

Peter Buhr on DBLP

• Ph.D., University of Waterloo (1997)
• M.Math., University of Waterloo (1989)
• B.Sc., Memorial University of Newfoundland (1987)

• I primarily teach introductory computer science courses to non-majors.
• I try to connect concepts taught in class to real-world concerns, and to build interest in computer science, particularly for students who may not have been interested before.

• Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, United States (2021)
• M.Sc., RWTH Aachen University, Germany (2017)
• B.Sc., Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China (2014)

• Natural Language Processing
• Deep Learning

Wenhu Chen on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Manitoba (1981)
• M.Sc., University of Manitoba (1978)
• B.Sc., University of Manitoba (1977)

• High Recall Information Retrieval
• Legal and medical applications of Information Retrieval

Gordon Cormack on Google Scholar

• D.Sc. (honoris causa), University of Guelph (2011)
• Ph.D., University of Waterloo (1965)
• M.Sc., University of Waterloo (1961)
• B.A.Sc., University of Toronto (1960)

• Software engineering methods for constructing and verifying advanced software systems and applications
• Development of advanced software systems and applications incorporating novel database systems and artificial intelligence components

Donald Cowan Publications

• I am interested in systems-oriented research. I work at the intersection of distributed systems and data management, particularly on building large-scale systems, storage and infrastructure in the cloud and on modern hardware.

• Ph.D., University of British Columbia (1998)
• M.Sc., University of British Columbia (1993)
• B.Sc., University of Western Ontario (1991)

• Software engineering
• Formal methods
• Software requirements and modelling

Nancy Day Publications

• Ph.D., University of Western Ontario (1979)
• M.Sc., Australian National University, Australia (1977)
• B.Sc., University of Western Ontario (1975)

• Computational finance
• Machine learning methods for optimal stochastic control in finance

Peter Forsyth on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (2015)
• M.Sc., The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (2010)
• B.Sc., Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece (2009)

• Machine Learning on Graphs
• Numerical Optimization

Kimon Fountoulakis on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., Stanford University (1971)
• M.Sc., University of Alberta (1966)
• B.Sc., University of Alberta (1964)

• My primary focus is the (numerous and varied) problems associated with solving very large sparse systems of equations
• Some examples include analysis of the complexity of certain algorithms, numerical stability issues, design of efficient data structures, design of software packages with good user interfaces, and automatic identification of exploitable parallelism in sparse matrix computations

• Ph.D., University of Toronto (1993)
• M.Sc., University of Toronto (1988)
• B.Sc., University of British Columbia (1986)

• Computational algebra and symbolic computation
• Symbolic-numeric and numerical computation
• Algebraic complexity

Mark Giesbrecht Publications

• Ph.D., University of Toronto (1997)
• M.Sc., University of Toronto (1988)
• B.Sc., University of Toronto (1986)

• Software engineering, software evolution, empirical studies, code review, open-source software systems
• Software development analytics, mining software repositories, software artifact provenance
• Code duplication analysis, program comprehension, software architecture, software fact extraction and modelling

Michael Godfrey on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, United States (2000)
• M.Sc., University of California, Berkeley, United States (1998)
• B.Math., University of Waterloo (1995)

• Privacy enhancing technologies, including metadata-protecting communication, privacy preserving computation, and censorship resistance
• Computer security and privacy, including trusted execution environments and oblivious algorithms
• Cryptography, including security multiparty computation, threshold cryptography, and zero-knowledge proofs

Ian Goldberg Publications

• J.D., Georgetown University Law Center (1999)
• Ph.D., Adelphi University, United States (1984)
• M.A., Adelphi University, United States (1982)
• A.B., Brown University, United States (1980)

• High-Recall Information Retrieval, in which the goal is to find substantially all information relevant to an information need with the least possible effort, where the stakes of missing relevant information are high
• Key application areas include electronic discovery in law, curation of government archives, and systematic review in evidence-based medicine
• Responsible AI and Data Science, which includes, but is not limited to, legal, ethical, and policy considerations

Maura R. Grossman on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of California San Diego, United States (2011)
• B.Eng., University of Tokyo, Japan (2006)

• Combines applied mathematics, computer science, and physics to tackle problems related to visual simulation of objects
• Topics include computer graphics, light transport simulation, computational statistics, and numerical analysis (numerical solvers for differential/integral equations)

Toshiya Hachisuka Publications

• Ph.D., Duke University, United States (2018)
• M.Sc., Duke University, United States (2015)
• B.Sc., National University of Singapore, Singapore (2012)

• Privacy and security for big-data
• The development of usable and trustworthy tools for data exploration and machine learning with provable security and privacy guarantees

Xi He on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University (2005)
• M.Sc., Carnegie Mellon University (2003)
• Diploma, ETH Zürich, Switzerland (1997)

• Information privacy and computer and networks security with a focus on security and privacy challenges that arise in the context of smartphones, mobile applications, and IoT
• User authentication with a focus on using machine learning for securing or attacking devices and services
• Implicit user authentication, where a device or service continuously authenticates the user based on their behaviour and context

Urs Hengartner Publications

• Ph.D., University of British Columbia (2004)
• M.Sc., University of British Columbia (1995)
• B.Sc., McGill University (1992)

• Assistive Technologies and Rehabilitation Science
• Emotional Artificial Intelligence and Affective Computing
• Decision-making under uncertainty

Jesse Hoey on Google Scholar

Degrees

• BE, Computer Software, Tsinghua University (2014)
• Ph.D., Computer Science and Engineering, HKUST (2019)

Research interests

• Fundamental problems in database theory and their implications to practical systems
• Massively parallel query processing
• Dynamic query processing
• Oblivious query processing

Publications

Xiao Hu on Google Scholar

Responsibilities:

• Oversee administration of master’s research program
• Event planning including graduate orientation
• Manage TA assignments and TA and RA payroll
• Assist with NSERC/OGS/QE2 competitions
• Assist with CS graduate web pages

• Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States (2018)
• S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States (2014)
• B.Sc., Cornell University, United States (2012)

• Differential privacy, robustness
• Machine learning and statistics
• Algorithms

Gautam Kamath on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Washington, United States (2002)
• M.Sc., University of Washington, United States (1998)
• B.Math., University of Waterloo (1996)

• Applications of mathematics and computation in art and design
• Computer graphics
• Computational geometry

Craig S. Kaplan Publications

• Ph.D., University of Turku, Finland (1991)
• M.Sc., University of Bucharest, Romania (1987)

• Biodiversity informatics, Comparative genomics, Genomic signatures, Machine learning
• Natural computation, Bio-inspired computing, Bio-molecular computing
• Watson-Crick complementarity in formal languages, DNA computing & combinatorics on words

Lila Kari on Wikipedia

Lila Kari on Google Scholar

• Dr.-Ing., Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany (2000)
• Diplom, University of Mannheim, Germany (1996)

• Computer Systems Software
• Networking
• Performance

Martin Karsten on Google Scholar

• Dr.-Ing., Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany (2010)
• M.Sc., Purdue University, United States (2000)
• B.A., Mannheim Cooperative State University, Germany (1997)

• Data security and privacy, confidentiality and integrity in data science, data collection, preparation and management
• Applied cryptography, secure multi-party computation, homomorphic and functional encryption, differential privacy
• Machine learning robustness, privacy, and provenance verification

Florian Kerschbaum on DBLP

Srinivasan Keshav is the Robert Sansom Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. Previously, he was a Professor at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science.

Although he started out as a researcher in computer networking in 1988, since 2010 his focus has been on reducing the carbon footprint of energy generation, transportation, and buildings. For the past couple of years, he also worked on improving the performance of the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain so that it can be used as the foundation for highly-scalable energy systems, such as for transactive energy and renewable energy certificates. 

He has recently turned his attention to the carbon sequestration and biodiversity potential of forests, looking at both conservation and restoration.

• Ph.D., University of Alberta (1988)
• M.Sc., University of Alberta (1986)
• B.Sc., University of Alberta (1973)

• Symbolic Computation/Computer Algebra
• Scientific Computation/Computational Finance

George Labahn Publications

• Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, United States (2004)
• M.Sc., Washington University in St. Louis, United States (1999)
• B.Sc., Memorial University of Newfoundland (1997)

• Artificial Intelligence with a focus on multiagent systems and reinforcement learning
• Cooperation and coordination in multiagent systems
• Applications of artificial intelligence to support sustainable development and climate-related initiatives

Kate Larson on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Toronto
• M.Sc., University of Toronto
• B.Sc., The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

• Algorithms
• Optimization
• Spectral Graph Theory

Lap Chi Lau Publications

• Ph.D., McGill University (2005)
• M.Sc., McGill University (2002)
• B.Math., University of Waterloo (2001)

• My research interests are in programming languages and compilers. My focus is on program analysis of object-oriented languages. I am currently directing most of my attention to Scala.

Ondřej Lhoták Publications

• Ph.D., Cornell University, United States (1985)
• M.Sc., Cornell University, United States (1983)
• M.Sc., Wayne State University, United States (1980)

• Recently I am working on methods for personalized cancer immunotherapy. A key issue for personalized cancer immunotherapy is to discover neoantigens on the surface of cancer cells. We are developing automatic, highly sensitive and personalized methods to sequence those peptides and validate their immunogenicity.

Ming Li on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Waterloo (1988)
• M.Math., University of Waterloo (1985)
• B.Sc., Sichuan University, China (1982)

• Professor Yuying Li's research interests include the design, analysis, and application of computational algorithms for continuous optimization problems.
• In addition, Li is particularly interested in applying computational optimization methods to practical problems, focusing especially on  application to  data science and computational finance.

Yuying Li on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Virginia (2022)
• M.S., University of Virginia (2020)
• B.S., University of Michigan (2016)
• B.S., Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2016)

• Computer architecture, especially the design of the next-generation processor, memory, and storage for datacenter-scale applications
• Programming and system support for new and emerging architectures
• Security in computer hardware systems

Sihang Liu on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Southern California, United States (2017)
• M.S., Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China (2013)
• B.S., Computer and Software Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China (2010)

• Developing machine learning and statistical methods for genomics and proteomics data analysis using interpretable machine learning, reproducible (error-controlled) machine learning, and heterogeneous data integration
• Developing interpretation methods to find scientifically interesting and statistically confident hypotheses from complex biological data from single-cell genomics, mass spectrometry-based proteomics, and metagenomics

Yang Lu on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Toronto (1986)
• M.Math., University of Waterloo (1982)
• B.Sc., University of Toronto (1979)

• Algorithms, specifically computation geometry, graph algorithms and graph drawing
• Current topics include reconfiguration, triangulations of planar point sets, shortest path algorithms, and folding and unfolding problems

Anna Lubiw on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., Peking University, China
• B.Sc., Peking University, China

• I conduct research in bioinformatics. I develop new experimental methods and computer algorithms for the determination of the amino acid sequences of proteins (de novo protein sequencing) by using mass spectrometry.

Bin Ma on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara (2022) 
• M.Sc., Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara (2017)
• B.E., Information Science, PESIT, Bangalore (2014)

• Distributed data management, fault tolerance, data privacy & security
• Designing, prototyping, and evaluating data management protocols that strike a balance between efficiency and security in both trusted and untrusted environments

Sujaya Maiyya on DBLP

• Ph.D., University of Toronto (1998)
• M.Eng., McMaster University (1990)
• B.Eng., McMaster University (1988)

• AI, perception and learning, computer vision (motion understanding, event recognition) and computer audio (acoustics, speech, music)
• Signal processing, electro acoustic measurement and infra sound

Richard Mann Publications

• Ph.D., University of Washington, United States (1992)
• M.Sc., University of Washington, United States (1988)
• B.A., University of California, Berkeley, United States (1986)

• Curve and Surface Design for Geometric Modeling and Computer Graphics

• CNC Machining

• Geometric Algebra and its applications to Computer Graphics

Stephen Mann on Google Scholar

Shane McIntosh joined the Cheriton School of Computer Science as an Associate Professor in July 2020. 

His research area is in empirical software engineering. More specifically, he has focused his research on release engineering. He has made significant research contributions in intelligent release pipelines, code review analysis, and mining software repositories. As of October 2019, Professor McIntosh has published 16 journal papers and 32 conference papers, all in the top research venues and leading journals of the field. As of August 2021, his papers have been cited more than 3,800 times with an h-index from Google Scholar of 32. He has been invited to many international workshops, such as Shonan and Dagstuhl.

Professor McIntosh has also contributed to the software engineering community as a program committee member in several top conferences, such as ICSE, FSE, and OOPSLA. He has been the co-chair of multiple workshops on release engineering and the co-chair of several tracks in top tier conferences. He was awarded a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) at McGill, and he was a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship holder. He was one of two Ph.D. graduates from the Queen’s University class of 2015 to be recognized with the Academic Gold Medal from Governor General of Canada for his Ph.D. work.

• Ph.D., Boston University, United States (2009)
• B.A.Sc., University of Waterloo (2003)

• Ph.D., North Carolina State University, United States (2011)
• M.Sc., North Carolina State University, United States (2008)
• B.Sc., Anna University, India (2006)

• Empirical Software Engineering, Mining Software Repositories, Mining Mobile App stores
• Diversity in Software Engineering
• Software Security, Static Analysis

Mei Nagappan on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., University of Toronto (1991)
• M.Sc., University of Toronto (1988)
• B.Sc., Yale University, United States (1983)

• Reconfiguration, including both algorithmic and structural investigations of the relationships among solutions to a problem or other entities, as related by step-by-step modifications
• Parameterized complexity, primarily algorithms, and among algorithms, primarily those involving graphs; considered on its own or in conjunction with reconfiguration

Naomi Nishimura on DBLP

• Ph.D., Princeton University, United States (2017)
• M.Sc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States (2012)
• B.Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States (2011)
• B.Sc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States (2011)

• Complexity Theory
• Optimization
• Geometry

Rafael Oliveira on Google Scholar

• Ph.D., Simon Fraser University (2003)
• M.Sc., University of British Columbia (1996)
• B.Math., University of Waterloo (1994)

• Neural networks and artificial intelligence
• Neuroscience, and the use of neural networks to understand the computational principles of the brain
• Biologically-inspired neural learning algorithms

Jeff Orchard on Google Scholar