David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

The Cheriton School of Computer Science is named for David R. Cheriton, who earned his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in 1978. In 2005, Professor Cheriton made a transformational gift to the school that supports named chairs, faculty fellowships, and graduate scholarships.

Discover our latest achievements by following our news. Upcoming talks on a range of computer science topics are found under events.

Please go to contact, open positions or visit if you have a question about school programs or services, would like to know more about faculty positions available or plan to visit our school.

News

Professor Matei Zaharia giving a lecture at the 2017 Cheriton Research Symposium

The Association for Computing Machinery has named Matei Zaharia as the recipient of the 2025 ACM Prize in Computing for his visionary development of distributed data systems and computing infrastructure, which has enabled large-scale machine learning, analytics, and AI at global scale.

Two athletes donned in formal wear posing with their huge trophies

Cameron Seth, a PhD student at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, took home the Totzke Trophy at the University of Waterloo’s 64^th annual Athletic Awards Banquet.

Two geese and their goslings walking on a paved round on Waterloo campus

Which of the following might leave a University of Waterloo student trembling in fear?

(A) Sleeping in and missing a midterm

(B) Being at the tail end of the semester and not having a co-op placement yet

Read all news

News

Cheriton School of Computer Science alum Matei Zaharia receives 2025 ACM Prize in Computing

Computer science PhD student squashes UWaterloo Athletic Awards

New website helps you duck, duck, goose on campus

Events

PhD Seminar • Systems and Networking • Root Cause Analysis in Networked Systems via Latent Cause Inference and Prior Knowledge

Please note: This PhD seminar will take place in DC 1302.

PhD Defence • Systems and Networking • Efficiently Training Deep Learning Models on Elastic and Heterogeneous Cloud Resources

Please note: This PhD defence will take place online.

Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning • On the Statistical Query Complexity of Learning Semiautomata: A Random Walk Approach

Please note: This master’s thesis presentation will take place online.