Congratulations to Dr. Sepehr Assadi, Dr. David Del Rey Fernández, and Dr. Wenhu Chen, winners of this year’s Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Awards. The $2500 awards are given each year to early- or mid-career faculty members in the Faculty of Mathematics in recognition of outstanding research contributions.
Sepehr Assadi
Sepehr Assadi is an associate professor and Faculty of Mathematics Chair in the Cheriton School of Computer Science. “I am honored to receive this award,” he says.
Assadi’s research concerns theoretical computer science, primarily algorithm design and complexity theory for modern models of computation. He is currently doing research concerning graph colouring algorithms and multi-pass graph streaming lower bounds.
“I would like to express my deep gratitude to all my mentors, both at the University of ݮƵ and beyond, for their guidance and support,” Assadi says. “I am especially thankful for my incredible team of graduate students – Vihan Shah, Janani Sundaresan, Parth Mittal, and Helia Yazdanyar – whose ideas, dedication, and creativity have been instrumental in making this research possible.”
David Del Rey Fernández (co-winner)
David Del Rey Fernández is an assistant professor of Applied Mathematics. “It is an immense honour to receive this award,” he says. “I am incredibly grateful to the supportive environment here at ݮƵ, the amazing colleagues that I have the opportunity to engage with on a daily basis, and the exceptional research that is occurring here at ݮƵ, which is a great inspiration for me.”
Del Rey Fernández’s research group works on developing the mathematics and algorithms that drive simulation software used in engineering and science to predict how physical systems evolve over time. “We are working on cutting-edge algorithms that have mathematical guarantees, and we are doing so in the context of classical numerical methods, machine learning accelerated methods, as well as methods deployable on quantum computers,” he says.
Del Rey Fernández is particularly grateful to Applied Math Chair Dr. Hans De Sterck for “his continuing support, and more broadly the members of my department for providing a rich and supportive research and collaboration environment.”
Wenhu Chen (co-winner)
Wenhu Chen is an assistant professor of Computer Science. “I feel very honoured to receive this award,” he says. “It would not be possible without the hard work from my students and my collaborators.”
Chen researches reasoning in foundation models, particularly how to incentivize the reasoning capabilities from foundation models.
“I would like to thank all of my students and collaborators,” he says.