Valentio Iverson, a fourth-year Computer Science major, has won the 2025 Germain-Erdős award, a recognition conferred annually for “remarkable contributions to basic mathematical research” by a student who has done a successful Undergraduate Research Assistant placement.
Coming from a family of teachers, Norwegian exchange student Christian Garmann Sørli has long been interested in using technology to support human intelligence.
Through the International Work-Integrated-Learning in Artificial Intelligence (IWIL AI) program, a joint initiative between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the University of Waterloo, Christian is leveraging AI to enhance and accelerate student learning.
Professor Sepehr Assadi and his international collaborators — Soheil Behnezhad, Sayan Bhattacharya, Martín Costa, Shay Solomon and Tianyi Zhang — have received a Best Paper Award at STOC 2025, the 57th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing.
Professor Jian Zhao has received an Ontario Early Researcher Award, which will provide $140,000 in funding to support his research on enhancing software development through visual interfaces and generative AI.
The funding from the Ontario government is matched by an additional $50,000 from the University of Waterloo, bringing total funding to $190,000 over five years.
Professor Gautam Kamath has been awarded $140,000 from the Ontario Early Researcher Awards program to further his research on algorithms and machine learning techniques that preserve data privacy.
The amount from the Ontario government is matched by $50,000 from the University of Waterloo, bringing total funding to $190,000.
Professor Freda Shi was featured in Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago's (TTIC), alumni highlight series.
Freda Shi, Ph.D. graduate from TTIC’s class of 2024 (advised by Professors Karen Livescu and Kevin Gimpel), joined the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in July 2024. In September 2024 she was named a CIFAR AI Chair and a faculty member at the Vector Institute.
Freda’s research focuses on computational linguistics and natural language processing, aiming to deepen the understanding of both natural language and human language processing. She explores how these insights can enhance the design of more efficient, effective, safe, and trustworthy NLP systems. She is particularly interested in learning language through grounding, computational multilingualism, and related machine learning aspects.
Seventeen students from the University of Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University dominated ETHDenver, held from February 23 to March 2, 2025.
ETHDenver is the world’s largest and longest-running Ethereum event. Since 2018, it has hosted blockchain-focused events, including panel discussions, workshops, networking sessions, and boot camps. Their main event is #BUIDLathon, a hackathon where attendees can team up to develop their own blockchain projects.
Professor Xiao Hu has received a Best Paper Award at the 2025 ACM SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data for her research on optimizing join-aggregate queries.
Her paper, Output-Optimal Algorithms for Join-Aggregate Queries, addresses a long-standing open problem in database theory, establishing output-optimal bounds on the efficiency with which such queries can be processed.
University Professor M. Tamer Öszu has received the Award of Excellence in Graduate Supervision, a prestigious recognition conferred annually since 2005 by Waterloo’s Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs in collaboration with the Graduate Student Association.
A lot has happened to Kristy Gao (BCS ’22) since graduating from the University of Waterloo, nearly three years ago.
She moved to San Francisco for her first post-graduation job. Started a book club to make friends. Got into an accident, where she, a Canadian, had to navigate the complexities of the American healthcare system. Quit her job to launch a health-tech startup, Cenote, with two people she met from her book club. Applied to Y Combinator (YC), the world’s largest and most competitive startup accelerator. Got accepted by YC and received $500,000 USD in seed funding.
We connected with our alum about her unique entrepreneurship journey, her passion for diversity, equity and inclusive (DEI) initiatives, and her words to her younger self.