News

A team of software engineering researchers has won the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at FORGE 2026, the 3^rd ACM International Conference on AI Foundation Models and Software Engineering, held as part of ICSE 2026, the 48^th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering.

The award recognizes recent master’s graduate Evelien Riddell, whose thesis forms the foundation of the paper, along with MMath student James Riddell, PhD student Gengyi Sun, research engineer Michał Antkiewicz and Professor Krzysztof Czarnecki.

Professor Yizhou Zhang has been awarded the 2026 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Junior Prize. The award recognizes a junior researcher who has demonstrated exceptional promise in programming languages research through impactful early-career contributions.

Santhoshini Velusamy joined the Cheriton School of Computer Science as an Assistant Professor in December 2025.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation with Professor Velusamy, where she discusses her research, advice for aspiring computer scientists, and what excites her about joining the Cheriton School of Computer Science.

PhD candidate Vasisht Duddu has been selected as one of 39 outstanding early-career researchers from institutions across the globe to be named a 2026 MLCommons Rising Star, an honour recognizing his contributions to machine learning and systems research.

To keep up with the AI paradigm shift, the University of Waterloo and Google partnered up to explore AI’s role in education and career readiness. This million-dollar partnership included the Google Chair in the Future of Work and Learning, which was endowed to Computer Science Professor Edith Law.  The research chair is part of Dr. Law’s broader initiative, the Future of Work Institute, which she leads as its inaugural Executive Director.

PhD student Yuzhe You showcased her AI-powered design prototype at Adobe Summit 2026, held in Las Vegas from April 19 to 22.

Adobe Summit is the world’s largest digital experience conference. Every year, Adobe gathers 16,000 attendees, ranging from industry leaders, marketers and data analysts, to “share ideas and best practices around customer experience management.”

Professor Gautam Kamath has won the 2026 Presburger Award. This prestigious honour recognizes his exceptional contributions to theoretical computer science, notably his pioneering work on computationally efficient algorithms for fundamental estimation tasks under robustness constraints.

Growing up in Brazil, computer science student Enzo Porto always loved the ocean. After finishing classes or during stressful weeks, he would often retreat to the family’s beach house to unwind. Enzo’s love for the ocean deepened further when he moved to Peru at 11 years old. He fondly recalls how Peruvians would hit the beach to celebrate New Year’s.

N. Asokan has been named a University Professor.

Conferred by the University of Waterloo, this rare and prestigious honour recognizes exceptional scholarly achievement and international pre-eminence. Once appointed, a faculty member retains the designation until retirement.

What if doctors could more accurately diagnose and monitor blood cancer with a simple blood draw? This vision is becoming a reality thanks to research at Rapid Novor, a Waterloo-based company co-founded by Dr. Bin Ma, a computer science professor at the University of Waterloo.