News

Growing up in a family where money was scarce, Floyd Marinescu (BMath ’02) saw firsthand the impacts of working class poverty. “Money was a source of a lot of conflict in my house,” he said. “I knew that if there was financial security, it would have been a lot better for my family.” 

A fan of Star Trek, Marinescu yearned for the egalitarian, poverty-less society depicted on the show, often wondering, “How do we get to that future?”  

A team of researchers at the Cheriton School of Computer Science, along with their colleagues at Western University, have successfully classified 191 previously unidentified astroviruses using a new machine learning-enabled classification process.

Nils Lukas, a PhD candidate at the Cheriton School of Computer Science, is the first-place winner of the 2024 Faculty of Mathematics Doctoral Prize. Now in its sixth year, this prestigious award recognizes and celebrates the achievements of top doctoral students in the Faculty of Mathematics.

Representing the University of Waterloo, two trios of algorithmic programmers put their coding skills to the test on the global stage at the 46^th and 47^th International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals. Held in Luxor, Egypt, from April 14 to 19, the simultaneous global coding competitions marked the final contests among the world’s top programming talent from some 124 universities across more than 110 countries.

For Doug Mulholland (BMath’82), a Research and Technical Manager at the Cheriton School of Computer Science, his work flows like water.

Upon graduation, he worked for the Computer Systems Group (CSG), currently directed by Distinguished Professor Emeritus Don Cowan. Since the early 1970s, their mission has been to make technology more accessible. Initially, the team focused on making computer science technology and education more usable to first-year students. The late 1980s to early 1990s saw the emergence of networked computers and web-based technology. 

Raouf Boutaba, Professor and Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science, has been named a University Professor. Conferred by the University of Waterloo, this rare and prestigious recognition celebrates professors of international acclaim for their exceptional scholarly contributions.

Congratulations to Computer Science student-led startup SheepIt, which won one of four $5000 prizes in the winter 2024 Velocity $5K Pitch Competition. 

The team was one of 26 that competed in the semi-finals and finals, out of more than one hundred applicants. 

"SheepIt is developing a tech solution for Canadian sheep farmers, who currently rely on pencil and paper for data tracking,” said Computer Science student Josiah Plett, pitching on behalf of his team.

Maura R. Grossman, JD, PhD, is a Research Professor in the Cheriton School of Computer Science, cross-appointed to the School of Public Health Sciences, at Waterloo; an Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School; and an affiliate faculty member of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. She is also Principal at Maura Grossman Law, an eDiscovery law and consulting firm in Buffalo, New York.

Computer Science, the University of Waterloo’s top-ranked subject internationally, has risen in the global rankings to the 21^st position, according to the latest edition of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject released on April 10, 2024.
    
This is the fourth year in a row that Computer Science was in the top 25 internationally and the top-ranked subject at Waterloo.

Professor Florian Kerschbaum has been awarded $2 million through the Ontario Research Fund to develop innovative data science and machine learning techniques aimed at safeguarding Ontario’s financial technology and manufacturing sectors from inadvertent data leaks. The project, led by Professor Kerschbaum as principal investigator and Professor N. Asokan as co-principal investigator, will enhance data security in these critical industries.