2026 IEEE Nick Cercone Graduate Scholarship
October 23, 2026
Ruiyi Fang, a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science, has been awarded the 2026 IEEE Canadian Foundation Nick Cercone Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science. Previous recipients have come from Dalhousie University, the University of Toronto, McGill University, and the University of Waterloo. He is the fifth recipient of this national award since it was first presented in 2018, and the first from Western.
The scholarship honours Dr. Nicholas (Nick) Cercone (1946–2015), an IEEE Fellow and leading figure in Canadian artificial intelligence research whose career spanned six Canadian universities, including terms as chair of computer science at the University of Waterloo and as dean at Dalhousie University and York University. Funded by his friends and colleagues, the $7,500 award is presented biennially to one computer science PhD student at a Canadian university.
The award recognizes exceptional promise in research with real-world applications outside computer science, together with a commitment to helping others, and Ruiyi’s work reflects both. Co-supervised by Professors Boyu Wang and Charles Ling, he studies how AI models can transfer knowledge across graph-structured data, such as molecules, in which atoms are connected by chemical bonds. He has published more than 17 papers at top machine learning and AI conferences, including ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS and AAAI.
He also applies these methods to scientific discovery. His work in npj Computational Materials helps researchers screen polymer materials before laboratory experiments, and he is now helping materials research teams in several countries discover new materials for clean energy and medicine faster and at lower cost.
Beyond research, Ruiyi is the Founding Chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Chapter in the IEEE London Section, established in 2026. Through seminars and reading groups, the chapter provides a lasting home for AI and computational intelligence research in the London region, connecting graduate and undergraduate students with one another and with the broader IEEE community.
Within his lab, he mentors fellow graduate students, helping them with technical problems and manuscripts, and he has served as a teaching assistant for Western’s undergraduate AI course. He volunteered at KDD 2025 in Toronto, gave an invited talk at Ontario Database Day, and reviews for major machine learning conferences and journals.
Through his research and service alike, Ruiyi aims to make AI useful beyond computer science while helping those around him grow.
