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CareerCast.com, a site to search for job opportunities by industry, function and location, has prepared an annual Jobs Rated report for almost three decades. Over those years, the workplace has evolved and changed dramatically, but one trend is clear: as the world becomes ever-more connected, quantitative and drenched in data, careers in computer science will increasingly take centre stage.

The earliest example of cryptography — the study and practice of techniques to make communications secure — is thought to be a section of nonstandard hieroglyphics that was inscribed on the tomb of Khnumhotep II, an Egyptian nobleman who served pharaoh Amenemhat nearly 4,000 years ago.

Lap Chi Lau, associate professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, has been named a 2016 Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher. 

Conferred by CS-Can/Info-Can, these prestigious awards recognize young computer science faculty members at Canadian universities who have received their PhD within the past 10 years and made highly significant contributions in their careers, particularly to research.

Businesses and institutions are drenched in data and sources of data. For some large organizations, data sources number into the thousands and the data within them can be in any number of formats. This creates mind boggling challenges — from accessing and managing data to integrating, analyzing and abstracting useful information from it.

Professor Pascal Poupart got hooked on computer science early. It began decades ago when he took a programming course and fell in love with the discipline. But perhaps even he didn’t foresee how this nascent interest in coding would lead to developing interactive artificial intelligence that improves hockey and physical and mental health.

Professor Pascal Poupart in his lab.

The University of Waterloo has the distinction of being the only Canadian university to have graduates who have created unicorns — start-up companies valued at more than $1 billion.

Six graduates have founded four start-up firms that have achieved unicorn status, so named because they are as uncommon as the spiral-horned creatures of fantasy and mythology.