CS minors, Katie Cones and Callie Garst inducted into ODK

Alpha Circle of Omicron Delta Kappa, the national leadership honor society, welcomed initiates at Washington and Lee University’s annual Founders Day/ODK Convocation on Jan. 19, 2021, at 5 p.m. Because of COVID-19, the convocation was held in a virtual format.  CS minors, Katie Cones and Callie Garst, both class of 2021, were among the inductees.

Katie Sue Cones (Montgomery, Texas) is majoring in math with minors in computer science and classics. She has spent several years as a STEM fellow, becoming a leader in her lab and continuing to use those skills now as a math teaching assistant. Cones was also active in several branches of FYOC leadership, helping the organization find ways to combat the challenges of O-week in a pandemic. She now focuses most of her time to running Indie Big-Little, marketing for Friday Underground, and preparing her art for the SSA conference.

Callan Jane Garst (Boones Mill, Virginia) is majoring in math and minoring in computer science. She is an active member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and has held the positions of large group coordinator, leadership academy coordinator and disciple. She currently serves as small group leader. She is treasurer of the Engineering Community Development Club and the social media chair and co-founder of Outreach Link, a club focused on raising money and awareness for victims of mass shootings. Garst, who has received funding to conduct research in number theory and algebraic geometry, serves as a teaching assistant for multiple mathematics professors and as a peer tutor for introductory courses in mathematics and physics.

For more info and a complete list of ODK initiates click here:  https://columns.wlu.edu/odk-to-initiate-three-honorary-50-student-members-at-2021-convention/

Highlighting CS Professor, Cody Watson’s publication

Cody Watson, an assistant professor of W&L Computer Science Department, has published a paper in the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) .  ICSE is the top conference in software engineering.

Learn more about Prof. Watson’s paper — “On Learning Meaningful Assert Statements for Unit Test Cases” here.

https://columns.wlu.edu/wls-watson-publishes-paper-for-conference/

Welcoming Professor Taha Khan to the CS Department

Taha Khan joined W&L’s Computer Science Department as an assistant professor during the 2020-21 academic year.  His research focuses on computer security, privacy and human-computer interaction, including cybercrime, commercial VPN services privacy, and privacy-centric management of longitudinal data in the personal cloud.

Click on the link to learn more about Professor Khan!

https://columns.wlu.edu/meet-the-professor-taha-khan/

Professor Matthews wins Best Paper Award

Liz Matthews, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at W&L, was selected for the  Outstanding Paper Award  at the 13th International Conference on Game and Entertainment Technologies.  The paper, which was co-authored by Juan Gilbert (University of Florida) is entitled “ATLAS CHRONICLE: DEVELOPMENT AND VERIFICATION OF A SYSTEM FOR PROCEDURAL GENERATION OF STORY-DRIVEN GAMES”.
The Conference Committee, taking into account the blind review process, considers this paper of the highest standard.

Please click on the link to learn more…

https://www.gaming-conf.org/oldconferences/2020/

Additionally, because Professor Matthews won best paper, she got to extend the paper and publish in this journal:

http://www.iadisportal.org/ijcsis/

Congratulations, Professor Matthews!

Check out CSCI 319 Video Game Design Final Projects!

The students of CSCI 319 – Video Game Design have turned in their final projects!  See their hard work at https://student-games.academic.wlu.edu/ under the Fall 2020 Games Page. Instructions for how to run the programs can be found on the page, see individual game pages for how to play. Windows OS does not need to install anything, Mac OS may need to install pygame (instructions also on the page).