Student Awards
Sabin Sadeh, Mark Zaky and Andrew Kim won first place at the 2013 Young Entrepreneurs Challenge (YEC) 01-2013
MCS Fourth-year students Sabin Sadeh, Mark Zaky and Andrew Kim presented a virtual jukebox app called eJuked at the competition held on campus in January. They won first place — and a prize of $2,500 — at the 2013 Young Entrepreneurs Challenge (YEC), where students pitched business ideas to a panel of corporate executives, Dragons’ Den style. Here's a link to an article with more details about it: http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/main-news/computer-science-students-win-2013-young-entrepreneurs-challenge
The winning project was one of the project done through CSC490H5 course in the Fall semester of 2012.
Congratulations Sabin, Mark and Andrew and their supervisor Professor Arnold Rosenbloom!
Mariya Boyko won the Dean's Excellence Award in Writing 2011
MCS student Mariya Boyko won the Dean's Excellence Award in the category of Writing, University of Toronto Mississauga, for her essay " Mobius Transformations" that she wrote in MAT392H5 ("Ideas of Mathematics" ) in the fall of 2010-2011. The award Committee was impressed with essay and commented on the quality of the writing and how Mariya Boyko was able to advance a mathematical idea within the context of a very well written essay.
David Farahany won the Dean's Excellence Award in Research 2012
MCS student David Farahany won the Dean's Excellence Award in Research, University of Toronto Mississauga, for his project "Change of variable formula and the Brouwer fixed point theorem", which he did under Professor Yael Karshon's supervision in the summer of 2011.
Abdul Rahman Ayoub Wins TAPA Award 16-07-2012
MCS Student Abdul Rahman Ayoub has won this year's Teaching Assistants' Training Program (TATP) Teaching Excellence Award!
TATP received 433 nominations on behalf of 197 Teaching Assistants. Abdul was one of only four winners this year. It is quite a remarkable achievement for him and MCS.
Congratulations Abdul!!
Putnam Competition 2010, 66 out of 442 teams
The Putnam Competition is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate students of the United States and Canada, awarding scholarships and cash prizes ranging from $250 to $2,500 for the top students and $5,000 to $25,000 for the top schools. It is being held every year, in December. The competition was founded in 1927 by Elizabeth Lowell Putnam in memory of her husband William Lowell Putnam, who, while alive was an advocate of intercollegiate intellectual competition.
The first UTM team was formed in 2008, and since then, a small group of interested students are writing the Putnam every year.
In 2010, the UTM team achieved a remarkable result. Huo Junwei, Garkusha Roman and Vitaly Kuznetsov were the UTM team members for the 2010 competition. The team rank achieved is 66 (out of 442 teams from all of the United States and Canada), which is a very high rank.
Huo Junwei, who was a second year economics and statistics student (at that time), scored 39 (out of 120). This is an extremely high score! Most students who write the contest score 0 (ZERO!), and even getting a score of 20 is a big achievement. As a result, Junwei appears on the list of students who ranked between 198 and 470 (out of 4296 students who wrote the Putnam last year).
Our chair, Professor Konstantin Khanin, has decided to award Junwei a cash prize of $500 for his outstanding result.
MCS Student wins Dean's Essay Prize 19-03-2008
Simon Elliott received the award for his essay written for CSC290H5.
Simon Elliott is a somewhat unlikely winner of this year’s Dean’s Essay Prize. The computer science major has written only one major essay all semester and his focus of study is, let’s face it, hardly a hotbed of literary activity.
“I was very surprised to find out I had won,” Elliott said. “I was up against English majors and others who write essays all the time.” The annual prize, which recognizes excellence in writing, is presented to undergraduate students from any discipline or program at U of T Mississauga (although fourth-year thesis papers are ineligible). Essays are nominated by faculty members; winners receive $1,000 and a meal with the dean.
Elliott’s “Reading Between the Lines: An Analysis of Beauty in the Code and its Role in the Computer Science Curriculum,” was written for the Communication Skills for Computer Scientists (CSC290) course taught by Professor G. Scott Graham. In it, Elliott took what he calls a “relativist approach” in arguing that beauty is a perspective that should not be taught.
Dean Gage Averill, one of the five judges, praised the essay highly. “It looked at a classic theme in philosophy with a philosopher’s eye…and applied it to computer science, but with an anthropological take, looking at how different communities of computer scientists think about code. Elliott touched on three major divisions of the university: the arts and humanities, the social sciences and the sciences, and crafted a stunning piece of work that transcended any given discipline.”
The multidisciplinary nature of Elliott’s essay stems from his varied academic interests and extra-curricular pursuits. After taking some engineering courses and founding an IT consulting company, Elliott completed a degree in police foundations at Seneca College. With a career goal of law enforcement, specifically in forensic computing, he then enrolled at U of T Mississauga with its top-notch computer science and forensics programs.
To round out his education, Elliott has also taken philosophy courses, including one that covered Friedrich Nietzsche, whose theory on aesthetics, or beauty, provided fodder for his winning essay. In his spare time, he enjoys creative writing, “mostly science fiction and a bit of fantasy and horror,” he says.
Elliott’s excellent writing style was another aspect that impressed Averill and the other members of the judging panel – Professors Richard Greene of the Department of English and Drama; Kirk Blankstein of psychology; and David Wolfe of political science; as well as Cleo Boyd, director of the Bob Gillespie Academic Skills Centre. For his proficiency as a communicator, Elliott thanks his grandfather. “He was an English teacher, and very strict about how we spoke. I was taught to appreciate good language skills.”
Elliott still hasn’t told his grandfather of his win, but is planning to break the news this coming Easter long weekend when he will join his family in celebrating his grandfather’s 90th birthday. “My grandfather,” says Elliott, “is going to be pleasantly surprised.”
SOURCE: University of Toronto News Release
MCS Student Wins National Award 23-09-07
Ramya Thinniyam awarded 2007 McGraw-Hill Ryerson Student Scholarship Award
The second annual McGraw-Hill Ryerson Student Scholarship Awards were presented to twenty college and university students who displayed Integrity, Classroom Engagement, and Initiative. Students were nominated by their professors for their contributions to the teaching and learning environment and received a $1000 award and certificate signed by the President of the Higher Education Division.
Ramya Thinniyam is 2007 graduate of MCS of the University of Toronto Mississauga and began graduate studies in statistics at the University of Toronto in September 2007. She was nominated for this award by Dr. Alison Weir of MCS.