David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Research from the Cheriton School of Computer Science is making inroads on one of the biggest problems in theoretical computer science. But the way to do it, according to Cameron Seth, a PhD candidate working in the field of algorithmic approximation, is by breaking the problem down into smaller pieces.

“Everyone working in computer science and mathematics knows about the ‘P vs. NP’ problem,” Cameron says. “It’s one of the notorious Millennium Prize Problems: so famous and so difficult that solving one will earn you a million dollars.”

Professors Meng Xu and Sihang Liu have received $254,116 in funding from the National Cybersecurity Consortium, a federally incorporated not-for-profit organization committed to advancing Canada’s cybersecurity ecosystem.

Their project, Securing LLM Agents Against Malicious or Vulnerable Tools, aims to identify and mitigate security risks in agentic systems — AI systems capable of making autonomous decisions and taking actions to achieve specific goals.

Four teams of algorithmic programmers from the University of Waterloo placed within the top 10 at the 2025 ICPC East Central North America contest, held on November 9 at the University of Windsor.

Competing against 86 teams from universities across east central North America, Waterloo’s trios of programmers placed second, third, sixth and ninth at the 2025 ECNA, underscoring the university’s long-standing strength in competitive programming.