David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

“I didn’t want to go to Waterloo,” Helen Dong says with a grin. “My older brother went here, and even though I look up to him I always wanted to do my own thing. But my mom convinced me I should go, and I’m so, so glad I did.”

Dong is this year’s winner of the K. D. Fryer Gold Medal, which is given to a student in the Mathematics Faculty each year who exemplifies both high academic standing and good citizenship.

As AI companies mature, the industry is now on the hunt for high-quality training data.

As Serena Ge, a former Waterloo computer science student, explained in an earlier interview in the article Four Waterloo-founded startups earn $2 million seed funding, “For large language models to work efficiently they must be trained on a lot of data so they can understand how the world works.”

Five professors from the University of Waterloo’s David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science have received the John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF), one of Canada’s top research grants.

In 1997, the federal government launched the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to spur world-class research and technology development in Canada. One of CFI’s core programs is JELF, which recognizes researchers who have demonstrated excellence in their fields and their proposed project is innovative, high-quality and meets international standards.