Author: Sara

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An Algorithm for Fun!

In Wednesday’s CSCI111: Fundamental of Programming I class, the students wrote an algorithm for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.   Fellow student Jean Paul Mugabe ’14 then attempted to make a PB&J sandwich using their algorithm.  The students could not make any assumptions about what Jean Paul knew, and Jean Paul did exactly what they told him to do in the algorithm.

Jean Paul Mugabe '14 follows the class's PB&J algorithm, while Professor Sara Sprenkle asks questions. As you can see, the class did not tell Jean Paul to remove the peanut butter jar's safety seal, so he stuck the knife through the safety seal.

This exercise illustrates the importance of having unambiguous programming languages because computers cannot infer what we’re telling it to do.  The exercise also motivates some important properties of algorithms, such as what data and operations we have available, naming, ordering steps, handling special cases, looping, and subroutines.

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Summer Research Opportunities

There are many opportunities to pursue research during the summer, both at Washington and Lee University as an R.E. Lee Scholar or at another institution, such as

Talk to the Computer Science faculty if you’re interested in pursuing one of these opportunities or if you know of other opportunities that we should add to this list.

 

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Professor Sprenkle at GHC

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Professor Sara Sprenkle attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Atlanta, GA from September 29-October 2.  The conference brings together women in computing from all over the world, highlights women’s technical achievements, and promotes women’s career interests.

2010’s conference is the 10th in the series and the fourth one Professor Sprenkle has attended.   This year’s conference broke records with a turnout of 2147 attendees representing 29 countries.

Professor Sprenkle served as a member of the Academic Advisory Committee and the Workshop and Panels Selection Committee.  She also moderated a panel called Getting Off to a Great Start in Academia: Advice from the Other Side of the Tenure Track, which attracted about 100 attendees.

prof sprenkle at ghc
Professor Sprenkle takes notes during the Thursday morning keynote.

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Summer Research At WLU: Is There a Person in that Image?

Will Richardson ’11 and Chen Zhong ’12 are working with Dr. Joshua Stough this summer on object recognition in natural images, a popular research front at the intersection of computer vision and machine learning. The goal is to take a digital image, for example from the popular flickr.com website, and to accurately assess whether that image contains at least one instance of a person, airplane, dog, table, chair, and so on among 20 different object classes. The three will submit their results at the end of the summer to a workshop competition associated with the European Conference on Computer Vision.  See the PASCAL competition website for more information.

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Rising Senior Simko Working on Research at Tufts University

Lucy Simko ’11 is spending this summer at Tufts University, working with Dr. Carla Brodley and two teammates on a research project through the Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.   The DREU program aims its programs at underrepresented groups in computing and engineering.

A week into her research, Lucy reports: “We’re developing a web crawler to essentially put together [the DREU program’s] mailing list for next year.  This may sound trivial, but it actually touches upon a lot of open questions, such as how to find websites of only computer scientists without going through the entire web, or what words are most likely to tell us that a website belongs to a certain demographic (such as student, female, and/or minority). We’re also interested in the machine learning aspect of the problem: that is, since the machine must be taught how to classify websites based on some training set, what should the training set include, and how should it be acquired”

Good luck, Lucy!

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Research Project Funded by CREU Program

Professor Sara Sprenkle and students Camille Cobb, Anna Pobletts, and Lucy Simko’s proposal of a research project focused on automating testing of web applications was accepted as a sponsored Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates (CREU) project for the 2010-2011 academic year. CREU provides stipends for the students’ work and additional funding for travel.

Stay tuned for updates on the new CREU crew’s progress!

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Grant for New Program for Women In Math and Science

Computer Science Professor Sara Sprenkle and Mathematics Professor Katherine Crowley were recently awarded a 2010 ACS-Mellon Faculty Renewal grant for “On Solid Ground: Building the Foundation for Women Faculty and Students in Math and Science.” The grant supports a program for women in math and science that will begin this fall.

Read more about it in the W&L News Story.

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Scholarships to Attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing will be held in nearby Atlanta, September 28 – October 2, 2010. The theme of the conference is “Collaborating Across Boundaries”. The conference is a great opportunity for students to network with employers for jobs and internships as well as with students and faculty from other schools.

If you are interested in attending the conference, you should apply for a scholarship. Scholarships cover conference registration (which includes most meals), lodging, and travel. Applications are due May 14.

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Phi Beta Kappa Inductions and the Pinney Prize

Today, students were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Senior computer science major Josiah Davis and senior computer science minor Bena Tshishiku were elected into Phi Beta Kappa last year.

At the Phi Beta Kappa convocation, it was also announced that Bena Tshishiku was awarded the Edward Lee Pinney Prize. According to the web page, the Pinney Prize is “Awarded by the Student Affairs Committee to an undergraduate student who demonstrates extraordinary commitment to personal scholarship and to the nurturing of intellectual life at Washington and Lee.” Congratulations, Bena!