The past year has been both eventful and successful for CPI. We began by successfully completing the renewal process: in December 2022, the University renewed CPI for another 5-year term. We launched several new initiatives, including the new Undergraduate Award program supported by our industry partners, which will recognize top-performing undergraduate students in cybersecurity/privacy courses, and two media projects, our CPI Spotlight Series and the Behind The Firewall videos, which shine a light on research achievements by CPI members and their backgrounds. We also continued successful on-going activities such as helping to stand up the National Cybersecurity Consortium (NCC), awarding Excellence Graduate Scholarships, and two rounds of our Seed Grant program administered jointly with other UWaterloo institutes. CPI played an active role in helping our members submit several proposals to the first call-for-proposals by NCC. We also made significant progress in the new strategic priorities we identified as part of our renewal process. For example, (1) Anindya Sen (CPI AD) organized a successful and very well-received workshop on health privacy where CPI experts explained the issues to an audience drawn from Health Canada and Statistics Canada (“Influence Public Policy”); and (2) Mastercard joins CPI as a CPI Partner, funding a significant research program as well as student scholarships and awards (“Build Partnerships”).

We recruited a permanent MD (Colin Russell). We also expanded our team by recruiting a communication specialist (Harminder Phull) and a business development manager (Ganna Bondarenko) on fixed-term bases. Their contributions are already evident in terms of increased visibility and engagement with new industry partners. With a complete team with the requisite skills in place, CPI will be well-positioned to deliver on its strategic priorities in the coming years.