Building researchers, mentors and leaders: Roy recognized for outstanding mentorship

Each year, the College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (CGPS) awards the Distinguished Graduate Mentorship (DGM) award to a graduate faculty member who demonstrates exceptional leadership in supporting graduate students, both in academic settings and beyond.  

The 2025-26 DGM award recipient is Dr. Chanchal Roy (PhD) from the Department of Computer Science. The award is the highest honour a faculty member can receive for graduate mentorship excellence at USask.  

Since joining USask in 2009, Roy has supervised or co-supervised over 100 undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. “I believe that this is the most of any faculty member with this amount of experience in the 50-year history of our department,” said Dr. Ian McQuillan (PhD), professor and graduate chair of the Department of Computer Science. 

Roy is professor of software engineering and computer science and co-director of the Software Research Lab. He is also the leader and program director of a University of Saskatchewan (USask)-led industry-stream, multi-university NSERC CREATE program that aims to train a new generation of software engineers. 

According to his students, Roy works tirelessly to support within and outside of academia, and encourages them to see failures as a stepping stones rather than stop signs.  

"Dr. Roy taught me not to fear difficult problems, not to be discouraged by rejection, and to understand that challenging ideas sometimes require years before their importance is fully recognized by the broader research community,” said PhD student Saikat Mondal.  

Roy facilitates a research environment where students are encouraged to take part in the mentorship process. New students are paired with senior graduate students or postdoctoral scholars whose research interests align with their own.  

“This model creates a productive self-reinforcing environment where junior students receive hands-on training, senior students develop leadership and mentorship skills, and research progresses collaboratively - producing not just graduates, but future researchers, mentors, and leaders,” said Mondal.  

For Roy, the goal is not simply to produce research, but to develop talent. “Research discoveries excite me, but people excite me more,” said Roy.  

Roy’s approach to mentorship focuses on seeing each student as an individual, rather than just one of many.  

"Every student who walks into my lab is a different person with different strengths, different fears, different dreams, and different obstacles,” said Roy.  “My job is not to run them all through the same program and see who survives. My job is to figure out who each person is, where they want to go, and then build a path specifically for them, and walk alongside them on it." 

“There are supervisors who advance your research, and there are mentors who change your life, said Ajmain Alam, a current PhD student. “Dr. Chanchal Roy has done both.”  

When asked what advice would offer to aspiring mentors, Roy said believing in students is  key.  

“When students know that someone genuinely believes in them and stands beside them through challenges, they often achieve far more than they initially thought possible.”  

For Roy, the DGM award is an opportunity to take mentorship even further in his program.  

“I am honoured, but I feel like I need to do more,” said Roy. “This recognition brings more responsibility. I hope I will do even better for my students in the future.”