News

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.

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.

Ricardo Baeza-Yates, a Waterloo PhD computer science alumnus, has received the 2025 ACM Luiz André Barroso Award, recognizing his pioneering contributions to algorithms and information retrieval as well as his leadership in fostering a vibrant transnational research community across Latin America.

A Cheriton School of Computer Science–led research team won the Social Impact Award at the 2026 Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI (CUCAI), held in early March.

CUCAI is Canada’s largest undergraduate AI conference. Every year, it connects around 300 students nationwide with industry leaders and innovators to “inspire the future leaders of AI.”

The Association for Computing Machinery has named Matei Zaharia as the recipient of the 2025 ACM Prize in Computing for his visionary development of distributed data systems and computing infrastructure, which has enabled large-scale machine learning, analytics, and AI at global scale.