Congratulations to Computer Science Award Recipients

Date: Mar 13, 2009

Computer Science students were recognized for their academic, research and altruistic contributions by the School of Computer Science on Friday, March 13, 2009. Fifty-six students, of which eight were outstanding scholars, were placed on the Director’s Honour Roll for maintaining at least an average of 10.5 in their major and a 10.0 GPA remainder of their studies. Third year student, Ali Karaki, scored at hat-trick and walked away with awards for the Highest GPA (3 or 4 year CS degree program), the Undergraduate Research Award (for his work and publication on SpeechWeb) and also became a member of the Director’s Honour Roll. Dr. Arunita Jaekel presented student, Thakur Prasad Upadhyay, with the Highest GPA Award for the accelerated BCS for University Graduates program).

Co-op students, Jay Lamont and Morteza Ershad-Manesh were also acknowledged for their excellent performance while working with their co-op employers. Jay worked for Valiant Machine & Tooling for two semesters and was described as “enthusiastic and a valued member of the team”. He has gone onto take a summer position with Statistics Canada. Morteza participated in a 16 month internship with IBM and was the first junior student to be placed with IBM. This position has traditionally gone to senior level students. He is now working in Centre for Career Education as an IT Consultant.

Dr. Scott Goodwin presented the recipients of the Volunteer of the Year and CS Service Awards. These awards recognize the huge amounts of time and effort these “unsung heroes” give to the School, making many of our programs and events possible. John Thompson was named Volunteer of the Year Award for his assistance in planning and executing many of our numerous events of the past year. Denton Cockburn, Johnny Kaps, Brian St. Amour, Chris Lorenz and Tom McDonald were also acknowledged for their volunteer work and were awarded the CS Service Award.

Dr. Akshai Aggarwal, Director of the School, welcomed the students. The keynote speaker was Mr. Trideep Aggarwal, CEO & President of Wizie Inc. He spoke about the job market for computer scientists and his own company’s need for highly trained computer scientists. His speech was followed by a question and answer period with many students participating in the discussion. The students were presented with a gift and award certificate. Awards were presented by Drs. Jaekel, Kobti, Aggarwal and Goodwin.

Click on the link, to view the complete list of recipients.