The Institute of African Studies is pleased to congratulate Ms. Daniella Niyonkuru for receiving a Senate Medal for Outstanding Academic Achievement when receiving her Master鈥檚 degree in Systems and Computer Engineering at the recent Fall convocation.聽 Such recognition is one of many this Burundian student has achieved.
In 2013, she graduated from the Universit茅 de Quebec en Outaouais (UQO) with top honours and she was awarded the prestigious Governor General鈥檚 Academic Medal. Her performance has been impressive ever since. During her master鈥檚 studies, she held two Ontario Graduate Scholarship (she was one of the 90 International candidates in the Province obtaining the scholarship, one of the 5 at 杏吧原创 and the only one in the Faculty of Engineering.); she won a Gabriel David Warshaw Memorial scholarship and has been finalist of numerous scholarship competitions including the Mackenzie King open scholarship. Repeatedly, Daniella has been recognized for her academic abilities at the university, provincial and federal levels.
She received an A+ in all her graduate courses. Her thesis was accepted with no revisions, which is extremely rare in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering.
She has already published three papers, including in the Proceedings of ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (PADS) and the Proceedings of 2015 SCS/ACM/IEEE Symposium on Theory of Modeling and Simulation, TMS鈥�15. PADS and TMS are the two top conferences in the field of simulation, and the acceptance rate of these top conferences is very low. She managed to get her research published in these prestigious conferences and in Computing in Science and Engineering, edited by the American Institute of Physics, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).
Daniella has the ability to wrap her mind around any concept, break it apart into its basic pieces and come up with new and interesting ideas. She asks the right questions in a way that lets you know she understands what you have explained and will build upon it. She also has the capability and drive to tackle challenging engineering problems, no matter how hard. Also, Daniella is able to communicate her ideas in a simple way that requires a mastery of knowledge. As her supervisor, Professor Gabriel Wainer observed, 鈥淒aniella is an outlier and is without question one of the top systems and computer engineering students we have ever had.鈥�
Daniella鈥檚 thesis topic required her to understand not only concepts related to the modeling and simulation field, but also know about the complex field of embedded systems. There was a tremendous amount of work involved, and still she managed to deliver two different kernels that were later deployed onto multiple devices. She is a truly hardworking student that cares about what she does and always strives for excellence.
In addition to her academic tasks, Daniella is involved in a large number of extra-curricular activities. She is particularly interested in activities that encourages youth especially girls to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). She currently sits as an executive member for the 杏吧原创 University Women in Science and Engineering (CU-WISE) group. She is one of the most consistent and popular CU-WISE blogger and her posts are always positive, sincere, well researched, and thought provoking. She has covered topics including: the power of positive thoughts, celebrating women鈥檚 unique characteristics, reviews of conferences she鈥檚 attended, retrospectives of our outreach activities and the dos and don鈥檛s of tech interviews.
Furthermore, Daniella has actively participated in outreach events and lead teams of volunteers to instruct elementary and high school students鈥� basic programming skills. She has also lead several workshops during Go ENG Girl, Girl Guide Engineering Badge Day and Pathfinder STEM Badge Day events for the past two years. She also served as a mentor for Virtual Ventures鈥� summer camps and gave lectures for the 杏吧原创鈥檚 Enrichment Mini-Course Program. Daniella launched an initiative that rewards high school girls in Burundi and has been a keynote speaker at various youth events in and outside of 杏吧原创. She has also been a part of various events that are too numerous for me to track.
Besides the previous activities, Daniella was a finalist of 杏吧原创鈥檚 2015 Three Minute Thesis Competition. She has also been featured as a in TechGirls Canada campaign and was one of the 30 in 30 women in science and engineering earlier this year by the NSERC / Pratt & Whitney Canada Chair for Women in Science and Engineering Ontario. She was also awarded a Google travel award – granted to female university students and industry professionals excelling in Computing across North America – for the Grace Murray Hopper conference, the world鈥檚 largest technical conference for women in engineering.