Awards | Achievements

Years: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009

Achievements and awards — 2022

Undergraduates Nicholas Vadivelu (runner up), Kelvin Jiang (finalist), Sourav Biswas and Vikram Subramanian (honourable mentions), Computing Research Association’s 2022 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards

Axelar (co-founded by Sergey Gorbunov), raises $35 million USD Series B funding

Master’s student Cheryl Lao, 2022 Adobe Research Women-in-Technology Scholarship

PhD student Greg Philbrick, Faculty of Mathematics Graduate Research Excellence Award

Waterloo teams Gold, Black and White, among top 10 at the East Central NA Regional International Collegiate Programming Contest

Jo Atlee, 2022 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award

Chengnian Sun with colleagues Yuan Tian and David Lo, Most Influential Paper Award, SANER 2022

PhD alumnus Mazen Melibari, among the 30 most prominent AI experts in Arab world, MIT Technology Review (Arabic version)

Former CS students Griffin Keglevich and Ruslan Nikolaev (co-founders of Float), Float named among 2022 C100 Fellows

PhD graduate Akshay Ramachandran, 2022 Mathematics Doctoral Prize (second place)

PhD graduate Ryan Goldade, 2021 Alain Fournier Award

Master’s student Sabrina Mokhtari, 2022 Vector Scholarship in Artificial Intelligence

PhD graduate Shihab Chowdhury, NOMS 2022 Best Dissertation Award

PhD student Soheil Johari, with Raouf Boutaba, Nashid Shahriar, Massimo Tornatore and Aladdin Saleh, NOMS 2022 Best Student Paper Award

PhD students Muhammad Sulaiman and Arash Moayyedi, Mohammad A. Salahuddin, Raouf Boutaba and Aladdin Saleh, NOMS 2022 Best Paper Award

Shane McIntosh, 2022 Early Researcher Award

Undergraduate Daekun Kim, 2022 Jessie W.H. Zou Memorial Award

Chris Trevisan (first-year CS), Wen Yuen Pang (second-year CS) and Marian Dietz (CS master’s student), second within east division and fourth overall in 2022 ICPC North America Championship (will advance to ICPC World Finals)

Undergraduate Leni Venn, Governor General’s Silver Medal

University Professor Ming Li, elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering

Robin Cohen, Khuzaima Daudjee, Ian Goldberg, Jesse Hoey, Florian Kerschbaum, Jimmy Lin, Victoria Sakhnini and Dave Tompkins, 2021 Outstanding Performance Award

PhD student Anil Pacaci, M. Tamer Özsu, colleague Angela Bonifati, Best Paper Award, ICDE 2022

PhD student David Radke, Tim Brecht, and colleague Daniel Radke, Best Research Paper Award, LINHAC 2022

Florian Kerschbaum, 2022 Faculty of Mathematics Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Award

Samer Al-Kiswany, 2022 ACM Senior Member

Tudor Barsan (CS), Norman Chen (SE), Maggie Liu (CS), Ashwin Roperia (CS), Sarah Wilson (CS) and Michael Xu (SE) — 2022 Schulich Leaders

Stacey Watson with Manisha Kamarushi, Garreth Tigwell and Roshan Peiris — Best Paper Award, MobileHCI 2022

Raouf Boutaba, Anita Layton and Jian Zhao — Canadian Foundation for Innovation awardees

PhD student Ryusuke Sugimoto, Christopher Batty and Toshiya Hachisuka — Best Paper Award, SCA 2022

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Don Cowan — J.W. Graham Medal in Innovation and Computing

Cheriton School of Computer Science — Number one nationally third year in a row, Maclean’s 2023 university rankings

Former DSG students Jeremy Chen, Yuqing Huang and Mushi Wang, and Semih Salihoglu and Kenneth Salem — Best Experiment, Analysis and Benchmark Paper Award, VLDB 2022

FairBlock, start-up founded by recent master’s graduate Peyman Momeni — $400k USD equivalent funding from Cosmos

Wenhu Chen and Xi He — Canada CIFAR AI Chairs

Achievements and awards — 2021

Ihab Ilyas, Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery

Maura Grossman, Shira Scheindlin Lifetime Achievement Award, Ediscovery Hero Awards

Ming Li, 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science, CS-Can/Info-Can

Mei Nagappan, 2020 Outstanding Early Career Researcher Award, CS-Can/Info-Can

MMath graduate Simeon Krastnikov, 2021 Huawei Prize for Best Research Paper

Waterloo Black (Ildar Gainullin, Jason Yuen and Wesley Leung), top spot at East Central North America International Collegiate Programming Contest

Arbitrium (Greg Maxin, 4B CS, Ahmed Hamodi, 4A SE), Concept $5K Winner

Waterloo Black (Ildar Gainullin, Jason Yuen and Wesley Leung), second place at 2021 ICPC North America Division Championships

PhD candidate Ahmed Alquraan, 2021 IBM PhD Fellowship

PhD graduates Mike Schaekermann, Hong Zhou and Fiodar Kazhamiaka, Cheriton Distinguished Dissertation Awards

PhD graduate Nashid Shahriar, 2021 Mathematics Doctoral Prize

MMath students Alex Bie, Matt Regehr, Xinyu Shi and Yiping Wang, Vector Scholarship in Artificial Intelligence

Bin Ma, University Research Chair

PhD graduate Mike Schaekermann, 2020 Distinguished Dissertation Award from CS-Can|Info-Can

Undergraduate CS student Nicholas Vadivelu, 2021 Jessie W.H. Zou Memorial Award

PhD candidate Shenghao Yang, Borealis AI 2020–2021 Fellowship

Byron Weber Becker, Eric Blais, Raouf Boutaba, Lori Case, Ihab Ilyas, Anna Lubiw and Pascal Poupart, 2020 Outstanding Performance Award

MMath graduate Abbas Abou Daya, Research Professors Mohammad A. Salahuddin and Noura Limam, and Raouf Boutaba, 2021 CNOM best paper award

PhD candidate Brad Glasbergen, recent CS graduate Fangyu Wu, and Khuzaima Daudjee, Best Demonstration Award, 2021 ACM SIGMOD/PODS

MMath graduate Iman Akbari with Mohammad A. Salahuddin, Leni Ven, Noura Limam, Raouf Boutaba, Bertrand Mathieu, Stephanie Moteau and Stephane Tuffin, Best Student Paper Award, SIGMETRICS 2021

Peter Forsyth with Ken Vetzal and Graham Westmacott, 2021 Brockett–Shapiro Actuarial Journal Award

Eric Blais, Early Researcher Award

Postdoctoral researcher Leili Rafiee Sevyeri, 2021 ACA Early Researcher Award

Undergraduates Ildar Gainullin, Jason Yuen and Wesley Leung, first place, 2021 ICPC North America Division Championship

M. Tamer Özsu, 2022 IEEE Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award

Undergraduates Saptarshi Bhattacherya, Alicia Bremer, Andrew Dong, Heidi Hon, Kushal Mujral and Eric Pei, 2021 Schulich Leaders

Cheriton School of Computer Science, Top Computer Science Program in Canada, Maclean’s 2022 university rankings

PhD graduate Shihabur R. Chowdhury, 2021 Alumni Gold Medal

Ihab Ilyas, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Former CS undergraduate Vitalik Buterin, Forbes 30 under 30 hall of fame

Achievements and awards — 2020

Undergraduate students Steven Feng and Shannon Veitch, Honorable Mention, CRA 2020 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards

PhD candidate Amine Mhedhbi, 2020 Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship

MMath graduate Jason Hu and Ondřej Lhoták, Distinguished Paper Award, POPL 2020

Ming Li and his coauthor Paul Vitanyi, textbook on Kolmogorov complexity, 2020 McGuffey Longevity Award

Wes Graham, 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award conferred posthumously, CS-Can/Info-Can

Florian Kerschbaum, 2019 Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award, CS-Can/Info-Can

W. Morven Gentleman (University of Waterloo CS faculty member, 1969–1983), 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award conferred posthumously, CS-Can/Info-Can

Hugh Williams (Waterloo alumnus, and Waterloo's first PhD graduate in computer science, 1969), 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award, CS-Can/Info-Can

Shai Ben-David, University Research Chair

Undergraduate CS student Shivam Sharma, Concept $5K pitch competition winner

Recent PhD graduate Priyank Jaini, second place, Faculty of Mathematics Doctoral Prize competition

Jo Atlee, 2020 IEEE Technical Council on Software Engineering Distinguished Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Award

Recent CS graduate Steven Feng, Honourable Mention, 2020 Jessie W.H. Zou Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research

MMath students Solaiappan Alagappan, Daniel Herman, Wanxin Li and Blake VanBerlo, Vector Scholarship in Artificial Intelligence

Women in Computer Science, NSERC PromoScience Program Grant

Maura R. Grossman, Faculty Teaching Award, York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School

Recent CS graduate Jameson Weng, Governor General’s Silver Medal

Edward Lank, Kate Larson, Ondřej Lhoták, M. Tamer Özsu, Peter van Beek and Troy Vasiga, 2019 Outstanding Performance Award

PhD candidates Brad Glasbergen and Michael Abebe, and Khuzaima Daudjee, Daniel Vogel and Jian Zhao, Best Demonstration Award, 2020 ACM SIGMOD Conference

Sergey Gorbunov, Gautam Kamath and Jian Zhao, NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplements

Undergraduate SE student Vikram Subramanian, ACM Student Research Competition, Undergraduate Division

Master’s graduates Rahul Iyer and S. Alex Yun, and Mei Nagappan and Jesse Hoey, ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Artifact Award

PhD candidate Stavros Birmpilis, Distinguished Student Author Award, ISSAC 2020

PhD candidate Hung Pham, ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, ASE 2020

Undergraduates Anish Aggarwal, Jacob Mausberg, Jason Xiong, Peter Zhu and Yashvardhan Mulki, 2020 Schulich Leaders

Jeffrey Shallit, Elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters

Cheriton School of Computer Science, Top Computer Science Program in Canada, Maclean’s 2021 university rankings

Recent PhD graduate Nashid Shahriar, 2020 Alumni Gold Medal

N. Asokan and his colleagues (Ian Liu, Assistant Professor at Zhejiang University, Wenting Li, Senior Software Developer at NEC Laboratories Europe, Ghassan Karame, Manager and Chief researcher of Security Group of NEC Laboratories Europe), 2019 Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Computers

Shalev Ben-David and Eric Blais, Best Paper Award, FOCS 2020

M. Tamer Özsu, named Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University

Achievements and awards — 2019

Tamer Özsu, 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science, CS-Can/Info-Can

Daniel Vogel, 2018 Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award, CS-Can/Info-Can

Robin Cohen, 2019 Distinguished Teacher Award, University of Waterloo

PhD candidates Nik Unger and Ahmed Alquraan, 2019 Huawei Prize for Best Research Paper

Undergrad CS students Jason Williamson, Bing Xu Hu and Rebecca Brown, Inaugural Pasupalak Velocity CS Capstone Award

Kate Larson, University Research Chair

Kevin Hyun, 2019 Jessie W.H. Zou Memorial Award

Jesse Hoey, 2019 Outstanding Recent Contribution in Social Psychology Award

Eldon Sprickerhoff (BMath ’91), 2019 J.W. Graham Medal in Computing & Innovation

PhD candidate Xiang Fang and Stephen Mann, best poster award at Graphics Interface 2019

Pascal Poupart, Canada CIFAR AI Chair

Ian Goldberg, tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Samer Al-Kiswany, elevated to grade of Senior Member by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Visiting PhD student Davit Harutyunyan, PhD candidate Nashid Shahriar, Roberto Riggio and Raouf Boutaba, best student paper award at NetSoft 2019

PhD candidate Shihabur Rahman Chowdhury, recent master’s graduate Anthony Anthony, and master’s students Haibo Bian and Tim Bai, and Raouf Boutaba, best paper award at NetSoft 2019

Md Faizul Bari, inaugural Cheriton Distinguished Dissertation Award

Charlie Clarke, Gordon Cormack, Olga Vechtomova, and their former graduate students, 2019 ACM SIGIR Test of Time Award

Ian Goldberg, and colleagues David Wagner, Randi Thomas and Eric Brewer, 2019 USENIX Security Test of Time Award

PhD candidate JC Chang, Christopher Batty and Vinicius Azevedo, best poster award at SCA 2019

Jason Amri, first-year CS student, Schulich Leader Scholarship

Raouf Boutaba, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Srinivasan Keshav, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Vic DiCiccio, Honorary Member of the University of Waterloo

Florian Kerschbaum, ACM Distinguished Member

Florian Kerschbaum, NSERC/RBC Industrial Research Chair in Data Security

Undergraduates Timothy Li, Wesley Leung and Arash Bigoldi, first place at 2019 East Central North America ICPC regional contest

PhD candidate Nashid Shahriar, recent master’s graduate Sepehr Taeb, PhD candidates Shihabur R. Chowdhury and Mubeen Zulfiqar, Massimo Tornatore, Raouf Boutaba, Huawei Technologies Canada research partners Jeebak Mitra and Mahdi Hemmati, best paper award at CNSM 2019

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Johnny Wong, Ye Hu, Marin Litoiu and Gabriel Iszlai, most influential paper award for research presented 10 years ago at CASCON 2009

Shai Ben-David and Yaoliang Yu, Canada CIFAR AI Chairs

Maura R. Grossman, named National and Global eDiscovery Leader by Who’s Who Legal 2020

Achievements and awards — 2018

N. Asokan, Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery

N. Asokan, ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC) Outstanding Innovation Award

Don Cowan, 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science, CS-Can/Info-Can

Ric Holt, 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science, CS-Can/Info-Can

Maura Grossman, named by Obelisk as one of top six women in law changing the legal industry

Tamer Özsu, University Professor

Khuzaima Daudjee, elevated to grade of Senior Member by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

PhD candidate Michael Cormier, Murray Martin Prize for Best Research Paper by a Mathematics Graduate Student

Women in Computer Science, 2018 Equity and Inclusivity Award

Khuzaima Daudjee, ACM Senior Member

Mei Nagappan, early career achievement award from Mining Software Repositories Conference

Daniel Vogel, Faculty of Mathematics Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Award

PhD candidate Michael Abebe, 2018 Facebook Emerging Scholar Award

Robin Cohen, Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association

Ian Goldberg, PhD candidate Nik Unger and colleagues, best paper awards at PETS 2018

PhD candidate Joseph Haraldson, ACM SIGSAM Distinguished Student Author Award at ISSAC 2018

John Brzozowski, Lila Kari, Bai Li and Marek Szykuła, Sheng Yu Award at CIAA 2018

PhD candidates Siddhartha Sahu and Amine Mhedhbi, Semih Salihoglu, Tamer Özsu and Jimmy Lin, VLDB 2018 Best Paper Award

Master’s student Aayush Rajasekaran, Jeffrey Shallit, Parthasarathy Madhusudan and Dirk Nowotka, EATCS Best Paper Award at MFCS 2018

First-year CS student Joey Yu, Gold medal at 2018 IOI

Postdoctoral fellow Andrew Kane, MMath graduate Dallas Fraser and Frank Tompa, best paper award at DocEng 2018

PhD candidate Yuhao Dong, master’s candidate Woojung Kim and Raouf Boutaba, best student paper award at Blockchain-2018

Katherine Gotovsky, 2018 Loran Scholar

Maura Grossman, named Leading Individual in Canada by Who’s Who Legal 2018 for contributions to eDiscovery

PhD candidate Mike Schaekermann, Joslin Goh, Kate Larson and Edith Law, best paper award at CSCW 18

Amir-Hossein Karimi, Alumni Gold Medal

Ali Abedi and Mohammad Mazaheri, first place at ACM MobiCom 2018

Waterloo Back: Jason Yuen, Sean Purcell and Joakim Blikstad, first place in 2018 ICPC East Central North America Regional Contest

Srinivasan Keshav, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Shai Ben-David and colleagues, best paper award at NeurIPS 2018

Achievements and awards — 2017

Janusz A. (John) Brzozowski, 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science, CS-Can/Info-Can

J. Ian Munro, 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science, CS-Can/Info-Can

N. Asokan, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Ian Goldberg, ACM Distinguished Member

Ken Salem, ACM Distinguished Member

Daniel Vogel, Early Researcher Award

Peter Forsyth, Distinguished Professor Emeritus

Ihab Ilyas, named Vice-chair of ACM SIGMOD

Srinivasan Keshav, elevated to grade of Senior Member by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Raouf Boutaba, PhD candidates Shihabur Rahman Chowdhury and Nashid Shahriar, postdoctoral fellows Sara Ayoubi and Reaz Ahmed and colleagues Jeebak Mitra and Liu Liu, best paper award at CNSM 2017

Jeff Orchard and undergraduate CS student Louis Castricato, best paper award at ICONIP 2017

M. Tamer Özsu, named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Troy Vasiga, ACM Senior Member

Master’s student Corey Sinnamon and John Brzozowski, Sheng Yu Award for best paper at CIAA 2017

PhD graduate Martin Derka, Therese Biedl and colleagues Markus Chimani and Petra Mutzel, best paper award at ISAAC 2017

Maura Grossman, pioneering contributions to e-Discovery and legal technology by the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists and Women in eDiscovery

Maura Grossman, 2017 Fastcase 50 award

Rudi Chen, Jessie W.H. Zou Memorial Award

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Don Cowan and Kyle Young, Award of Merit from the Volunteer Action Centre of Kitchener Waterloo and Area

Jesse Hoey, Tobias Schröder and Kimberly Rogers, 2017 Outstanding Publication Award from the American Sociological Association, and Outstanding Recent Contribution in Social Psychology Paper Award

Achievements and awards — 2016

Michael Godfrey, Most Influential Paper, IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, Reengineering

Ken Salem, Best Paper, 2015 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing 2015

Khuzaima Daudjee, Best Paper, 2015 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing 2015

Ashraf Aboulnaga, Best Paper, 2015 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing 2015 

Shai Ben-David, Best Paper, Transfer and Multi-Task Learning Workshop 2015

David Toman, 2016 Ray Reiter Best Paper Prize

Grant Weddell, 2016 Ray Reiter Best Paper Prize

Therese Biedl, 2015 NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement

Lap Chi Lau, 2015 NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement

Bin Ma, 2016 NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement

Timothy Chan, 2016 NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement

Jimmy Lin, 2016 NSERC Discover Accelerator Supplement

Minyang (Young) Han, 2016 Governor General’s Gold Medal for Highest Standing in a master’s program

Achievements and awards — 2015

Tamer Özsu, 2015 ACM SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award

Kate Larson, 2015 Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award, CS-Can/Info-Can

Lila Kari, Rozenberg Tulip Award in DNA Computing, International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering

Raouf Boutaba​, Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering

Trevor Grove, Honorary Member of the University

David Taylor, Honorary Member of the University

Johnny Wong, Distinguished Professor Emeritus

Tamer Özsu​, Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

Achievements and awards — 2014

Raouf Boutaba, McNaughton Medal/IEEE

Alan George, 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science, CS-Can/Info-Can

Mark Giesbrecht, ACM Distinguished Scientist

Tamer Özsu, Member, Turkish Academy of Science

Frank Tompa​, 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award in Computer Science, CS-Can/Info-Can

Frank Tompa, Honorary Degree, Dalhousie University

Carol Fung, 2013 Alumni Gold Medal (R. Boutaba, supervisor)

Tiffany Inglis, second place at ACM Student Research Competition (C. Kaplan, supervisor)

Achievements and awards — 2013

Raouf Boutaba, Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada

Ondřej Lhoták, 2012 Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award, CS-Can/Info-Can

Ian Goldberg, Canada Foundation for Innovation Award

Srinivasan Keshav, Cisco Chair

Srinivasan Keshav, Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery

Doug Stinson, University Professor

Michael Terry, MathSoc Instructor of the Year

Henry Shi, National Co-op Student of the Year Award

Waterloo Black Programing Team: Tyson Andre, Benoit Maurin, and Anton Raichuk, Bronze Medal at the 2012 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals

Achievements and awards — 2012

Raouf Boutaba, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Don Cowan, Honourary Degree, Doctor of Science, University of Guelph

Ian Goldberg, University Research Chair, Canada

Doug Stinson, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Jeremy Clark, Doctoral Alumni Gold Medal

John Champaign, Amit and Meena Chakma, Award for Exceptional Teaching by a Student

Francisco Claude, Google U.S./Canada PhD Fellowship in Research and Information Retrieval

Carol Fung and Jacqueline Mok, Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships

The Waterloo Programing Team: Tyson Andre (1A SE), Brian Bi (1A CS), and Hanson Wang (2A CS), Bronze Medal at the 2012 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals

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Achievements and awards — 2011

Richard Cleve, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Don Cowan, ACM Distinguished Scientist

Reza Dorrigiv, Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies

Ian Goldberg, 2010 Outstanding Young Computer Researcher Award, CS-Can/Info Can

Ian Goldberg, Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award

Ming Li, Killam Prize

Tamer Özsu, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Frank Tompa, Fellow of the ACM

Achievements and awards — 2010

Ashraf Aboulnaga, Ontario Early Researcher Award

Jie Zhang, Alumni Gold Medal for outstanding performance in a doctoral program

Achievements and awards — 2009

Ashraf Aboulnaga, CAS Project of the Year Award