News

On April 14, 2019, hackers targeted Stratford City Hall with a ransomware attack, which led to several crucial servers becoming unresponsive and unavailable. The attacker had installed malware on six of the city’s physical servers and on two virtual servers, then encrypted all systems so staff could not access information. The attack affected the city’s email system and online forms.

A pair of second-year University of Waterloo students shared the top prize at the inaugural Citizen Hacks, a recent hackathon focused on creating technology to protect privacy.

Professors Lap Chi Lau and Daniel Vogel have been named 2019 David R. Cheriton Faculty Fellows, positions they will hold until 2022. These prestigious three-year fellowships support the work of leading faculty members in the Cheriton School of Computer Science and are made possible through the David R.

Researchers at the Cheriton School of Computer Science have pioneered a new method that could be used to develop more natural automated virtual assistants to help people suffering from mental illness. 

Called SMERTI (pronounced smarty), the new method enables virtual assistants to use natural language and emotional cues that change depending on the relationship and situations in which they are used. The result allows for the development of virtual assistants that better connect with people they are used to help.

Melissa McCorriston has received a Vector Scholarship in Artificial Intelligence from the Vector Institute. These $17,500 scholarships recognize promising scholars and researchers in Ontario and support their further studies in a top provincial artificial intelligence–related master’s program.

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professors Raouf Boutaba and Srinivasan Keshav have been named Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada.

More than 75 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices are expected to be online by 2025. These connected devices will bring many new applications to our daily lives — everything from smart thermostats that sense and adjust room temperature independently, to cameras that monitor road congestion so traffic flows more efficiently, to high data rate sensors that will make self-driving cars possible.

Moojan Ghafurian, Graham Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cheriton School of Computer Science, and Kerstin Dautenhahn, Canada 150 Chair in Intelligent Robotics in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have received a catalyst grant from the University of Waterloo’s Network for Aging Research to d

Jason Amri, a high school student from Ancaster, Ontario, is making his way to the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science with a prestigious Schulich Leader Scholarship, the largest STEM scholarship in Canada for programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. 

Researchers have developed a new voice assistant that allows people with visual impairments to get web content as quickly and as effortlessly as possible from smart speakers and similar devices.