[029r0823jr]

> This selection will certainly put a dent in Waterloo's reputation, though with any luck they'll be able to capitalize on it in some capacity due to their proximity.

Highly doubt it. Waterloo is known for being mediocre/trash for CS research. People go to Waterloo to get into industry and not academics.

[AvenueIngres]

>Waterloo is known for being mediocre/trash for CS research

Are you out of your mind?

Do you know why Waterloo's School of Computer Science is named after David R. Cheriton?

Yeah, the same DRC who made a major exit to Cisco, seed funded Google and hold an emeritus professorship at Stanford.

A sizeable chunk of the people who published Spark have done their undergrad' or research masters at UW.

Waterloo is definitely top-notch at the undergrad', perhaps less impressive than schools with bigger endowment at the research level, but far from being "trash". Tons of Waterloo profs are on the steering committees of major CS conferences (VLDB most notably).

This comment is so puerile, it has to be written by some jealous and petty undergraduate student. Or so I hope.

[batty]

The most recent Times Higher Ed world university rankings for Computer Science put Toronto at 17, Waterloo at 23. The QS rankings give Toronto 11, Waterloo 26. You can debate the merit of rankings, but there's simply no credible way to argue that a school that routinely appears in in the world's top 30 is "mediocre/trash".

Relatedly, Waterloo is in fact included in the Budget 2017 funding for Canada's overall AI initiative, of which this Vector stuff is a part:

"In this budget, the government announced the creation of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which will promote collaboration between AI hubs Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal, and Edmonton. It will be dedicating $125 million towards the launch of this strategy."