Seven faculty members at the Cheriton School of Computer Science have received a 2024 Outstanding Performance Award. Established in 2005, this prestigious recognition honours 蓝莓视频 faculty members who demonstrate exceptional teaching and scholarship.
鈥淐ongratulations to Toshiya, Xi, Florian, Ond艡ej, Shane, Victoria and Jian,鈥 said Raouf Boutaba, University Professor and Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science. 鈥淭hese awards reflect their exceptional contributions to research and teaching, as well as their dedication to advancing knowledge, supporting students and pushing the boundaries of computer science.鈥
Toshiya Hachisuka
Associate Professor
Co-Director, Computing and Financial Management Program
Cheriton Faculty Fellow, 2023鈥26
Professor Hachisuka鈥檚 research focuses on the numerical and mathematical aspects of light transport simulation for realistic image synthesis. By combining applied mathematics, computer science and physics, he works on various problems related to visual simulation of objects. As his work spans several distinct areas, he is a member of three research groups 鈥 Computer Graphics, Scientific Computation and Computational Mathematics.
Before joining 蓝莓视频 in 2020, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo and an Assistant Professor at Aarhus University. His research has been recognized with several awards, including Best Paper Awards at SCA 2022 and Graphics Interface 2019. He is also a Cheriton Faculty Fellow, a distinction that supports research excellence among the School鈥檚 faculty, for a three-year term that began in 2023.
Xi He
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Member, Data Systems (DSG) and Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) research groups
Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Professor He鈥檚 research spans the areas of privacy and security for big data, with a focus on designing strong and useful privacy models for data exploration and learning with a theoretical understanding of the trade-offs between privacy and application usability. She also builds practical systems that enable learning of useful information from data while provably ensuring the privacy of individuals.
Professor He鈥檚 awards include a Data Analytics and Insights Award from Google in 2023, a Privacy-preserving Technology Research Award from Meta in 2022, and a Processing and Analysis Award from Google in 2022. In 2022 she was appointed a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and faculty member at the Vector Institute, and in 2024 received the Faculty of Mathematics Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Award.
Florian Kerschbaum
Professor
NSERC/RBC Research Chair in Data Security
Inaugural Director, 蓝莓视频鈥檚 Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute
Cheriton Faculty Fellow, 2024鈥27
Before joining the University of 蓝莓视频, Professor Kerschbaum worked as chief research expert at SAP in Karlsruhe from 2005 to 2016, and as a software architect at Arxan Technologies in San Francisco from 2002 to 2004. He is interested in security and privacy in the entire data science lifecycle. He extends real-world systems with cryptographic security mechanisms to achieve provable security guarantees. His work is used in several business applications.
Professor Kerschbaum鈥檚 recognitions include being named an ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2019, receiving the Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award from CS-Can | Info-Can in 2019, and winning the Faculty of Mathematics Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Award in 2022. Additionally, he is the NSERC/RBC Research Chair in Data Security, an industrial research chair he has held since 2019. He also holds a Cheriton Faculty Fellowship for the term 2024鈥2027. As a recipient of 蓝莓视频鈥檚 2021 Outstanding Performance Award, this marks the second time Professor Kerschbaum has been recognized for his outstanding research achievements.
Ond艡ej Lhot谩k
Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Member, Programming Languages research group
Professor Lhot谩k鈥檚 research focuses on programming languages and compilers, with a particular emphasis on program analysis of object-oriented languages, including work on the Scala programming language.
A dedicated educator and mentor, Professor Lhot谩k received the Faculty of Mathematics 2024 Award for Distinction in Teaching, recognizing his outstanding commitment to undergraduate computer science education. Outside the classroom, he helps coach 蓝莓视频鈥檚 teams for the International Collegiate Programming Contest, a prestigious multi-tiered competition that advances from local university contests through regional championships to the World Finals.
He has coauthored several award-winning papers, including 鈥淯ndecidability of D<: and Its Decidable Fragments,鈥 which received a Distinguished Paper Award at POPL 2020, and 鈥淚nitializing Global Objects: Time and Order, 鈥 which was recognized with a Distinguished Paper Award at OOPSLA 2023. In 2012, he received the Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award from CS-Can | Info-Can.
Shane McIntosh
Associate Professor and Associate Director of Graduate Studies
2022 Ontario Early Researcher Awardee
Ross and Muriel Cheriton Faculty Fellow, 2023鈥2026
Lead, Software REBELs
Professor McIntosh and his students perform empirical studies that mine the historical data that is generated during the development of large-scale software systems. His research focuses on release engineering, specifically the process of assembling, verifying, and delivering releases of software systems from its sources, and on software quality, which involves deriving practical guidelines for developing more reliable software systems.
Professor McIntosh was awarded the Governor General鈥檚 Academic Gold Medal for his outstanding PhD research at Queen鈥檚 University. In 2022, he was among eight researchers at the University of 蓝莓视频 to receive an Ontario Early Researcher Award for his proposal to develop self-sustaining software build systems. Additionally, he holds the Ross and Muriel Cheriton Faculty Fellowship for the term 2023鈥2026.
Victoria Sakhnini
Associate Professor, Teaching Stream
Director, Software Engineering Program
Professor Sakhnini is a passionate educator and advocate for gender equity in computer science and software engineering. As the primary academic advisor for software engineering students, she supports their academic and personal growth. She is also an associate professor 鈥 teaching stream in the Cheriton School of Computer Science, primarily teaching first- and second-year computer science courses and a software requirements specification and analysis course that is directly related to her research interests. She is also the course maintainer for CS137 and CS247, and she helped develop the course content and additional resources for students鈥 support.
As an educator, she helps students become knowledgeable, independent thinkers by encouraging and challenging them, fostering critical thinking, and passing on the inspiration she received from her teachers.
As a recipient of 蓝莓视频鈥檚 2021 Outstanding Performance Award, this marks the second time Professor Sakhnini has been recognized for her innovative teaching and mentorship.
Jian Zhao
Associate Professor
Director, WVisdom Lab
2025 Ontario Early Researcher Awardee
Professor Zhao directs the WVisdom research lab and is affiliated with the 蓝莓视频 HCI lab. His research focuses on information visualization, human-computer interaction, data science, and human-centred AI. He develops novel interactive systems and visual representations that promote the interplay between humans, machines and data. His research aims to boost the efficiency of human-data interaction with exploratory and explanatory interfaces that tightly integrate the flexibility and creativity of users with the scalability of algorithms and machine learning.
Professor Zhao鈥檚 research has received four Best Paper and seven Honourable Mention awards at top venues in human-computer interaction and data visualization. He is also the recipient of the NSERC Discovery Accelerator Award in 2020. Most recently, in May 2025 he received an Ontario Early Researcher Award to train the next generation of researches to enhance software development through visual interfaces and generative AI.