Category: Honors Thesis

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2025 Computer Science Degrees, Scholarships, Prizes and Awards

Congratulations to the Computer Science Class of 2025 — majors and minors alike — for their outstanding achievements!
Below are their accomplishments, listed along with those of select CS undergraduates, as they appear in the Commencement Bulletin.

2025 Graduates:

Majors:

  • Desire Nkoro Asinya – Bachelor of Arts, cum laude
  • Naka Alounkou Reine Assoumatine- Bachelor of Science, cum laude
  • Jenna Marie Bernstein-Bachelor of Science, cum laude
  • Aiden Phillip Boeshans- Bachelor of Arts
  • Barrett Michael Bourgeois- Bachelor of Science
  • Medaly Cardenas Retamozo- Bachelor of Arts
  • Elle Taylor Coffman- Bachelor of Science
  • Payton Crawford – Bachelor of Arts, Honors in Economics (Thesis “Understanding Increases in Black Firearm Deaths from 2015-2022:  Evidence from Firearm Sales, Laws and State-Level Characteristics”)
  • Mohamed Soliman Elhussiny*- Bachelor of Arts
  • Matthew Thomas Fritz-Bachelor of Science, cum laude
  • Tyler Jordan Halliday*- Bachelor of Science
  • Allison Hildago- Bachelor of Science
  • Mark Thomas Holden- Bachelor of Science
  • Han Ngoc Huynh- Bachelor of Arts, cum laude
  • Elizabeth Delia Kent- Bachelor of Arts
  • Connor Lehman – Bachelor of Science
  • Bezawit Mengistu – Bachelor of Science
  • Fekry Mostafa- Bachelor of Arts
  • Edward Reese Nelson IV- Bachelor of Science, magna cum laude
  • Hoang Phuong Linh Nguyen- Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
  • Michelle Serena Nguyen- Bachelor of Arts
  • Bedford Henley Scott- Bachelor of Arts
  • Lakpa Finju Sherpa- Bachelor of Science
  • Eric John Sorenson III- Bachelor of Science
  • Alexandra Maria Thorpe- Bachelor of Science
  • Ignas Volcokas – Bachelor of Science, Honors in Computer Science (Thesis “MAchine Learning for Democracy:  An Exploration of AI Driven Representation”), Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
  • Weichao Xia – Bachelor of Science
  • Lydia Zijing Yang- Bachelor or Arts, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
  • Runze Zhu- Bachelor or Science, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude* degree conferred on December 31, 2024

Minors:

  • Charlotte Carmichael Baker- Bachelor of Science
  • Elijah Uno Christopher- Bachelor of Science
  • Chaz Noah Jackson – Bachelor of Science
  • Sarah Jean Lathrop- Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
  • Ngoc Anh Le- Bachelor of Science, cum laude
  • Austin Hunter Molitor – Bachelor of Science, Honors in Mathematics (Thesis “Algorithmic Approaches to Constructing Riesel Numbers, Sierpinski Numbers and Riesel-Sierpinski Numbers in the Polyhedral Integer Sequences”), Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
  • Declan Joseph Treacy- Bachelor of Science
  • Benjamin Luke Weller – Bachelor of Science
  • James Michael Wiater- Bachelor of Science

Special Honors:

  • Sarah Jean Lathrop – Valedictorian
  • Lydia Zijing Yang – Valedictorian

Fellowships Received:

  • Samuel David Cook ’27 – Boren Scholarship, Chinese
  • Alexander Bousman ’28  – U.S. Department of State Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship

Scholarships Awards and Prizes:

  • Kidus Alemayehu Tegene –  The Vincent L. Bradford Scholarship
  • Austin Hunter Molitor – The Robinson Award in Mathematics and Science

Departmental Awards:

  • Ignas Volcokas – The Computer Science Department Award
  • Desire Neoro Asinya – The Linda Cooper and Bobby Henderson Prize
  • Payton Crawford – The Linda Cooper and Bobby Henderson Prize, The Kim Family Prize in Economics
  • Slasbil Abdelkawy Hassan ’28 – The First-Year Writing Award
  • Lydia Zijing Yang – Certificate of International Immersion
  • Gabriel Thomas Hogan ’26 – The Lenfest Center of the Arts Award, The Excellence in Artistic Management Award
  • Austin Hunter Molitor – The Williams Prize in Mathematics
  • Nicholas McClelland Tussing ’24 – The Captain Jay W. Stull Memorial Award, US Marine Corps
  • Colin Patrick Looby ’24 – The Todd D. Jones ’85 Memorial Scholarship
  • Alexander Bousman ’28  – The Physics and Engineering First-Year Award
  • Han Ngoc Huynh- The David Novack Prize for Excellence in Sociology and Anthropology and the Study of Gender and Sexuality
  • Elijah Uno Christopher- The Falcon Award
  • Mark Troni ’26 – J.C. Peebles Memorial Wrestling Award
  • Vinny Ziccardi ’26 – Gary R. Franke True Blue Award
  • Cat Caples – I Am 3rd Award
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2024 Computer Science Degrees, Scholarships, Prizes and Awards

Congratulations to the Class of 2024 Computer Science Majors and Minors for their outstanding achievements!   Their accomplishments, along with the accomplishments of certain CS undergraduates  are listed here, as they appear in the Commencement Bulletin.

2024 Graduates:

Majors:

  • Timileyin John Adekola – Bachelor of Science
  • Giorgio Louis Antonacci- Bachelor of Arts
  • Mohammed Danish Bokhari- Bachelor of Science,  Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
  • Joseph Anthony Bosco- Bachelor of Arts, cum laude
  • Andrew Joseph Condie Jr.- Bachelor of Science
  • Malachi Chad Eberly- Bachelor of Science
  • Bennett John Ehret- Bachelor of Science
  • Petra Ilic- Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude
  • Jackson Kemper Jacobs- Bachelor of Science,  cum laude
  • Ngoc Bao Le- Bachelor of Arts
  • Jose Armando Mendez- Bachelor of Arts
  • Julia Susan Raskin- Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
  • Renan Viera Silva- Bachelor of Science
  • Matthais Stock **- Bachelor of Arts
  • William Ryan Tobin – Bachelor of Science
  • Nicholas McClelland Tussing- Bachelor of Arts
  • William Xue- Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
  • Kathryn Marie Yurechko- Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude

Minors:

  • Jack Wilford d’Entremont- Bachelor of Science
  • Jacob Nicholas Jackson- Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
  • Andrew Harris Larsen- Bachelor of Science
  • John Dabbs Schleider, Jr.- Bachelor of Arts, Honors in Economics (Thesis: “Systematic Risk and Measures of Monopoly Power”), cum laude
  • Jonathan Taft Symonds III- Bachelor of Science

Special Honors:

  • Kathryn Marie Yurechko  – Valedictorian, The Algernon Sydney Sullivan Medallion

Fellowships Received:

  • Julia Susan Raskin  – Fulbright U.S. Student Program, Germany
  • Austin Hunter Molitar ’25 – Goldwater Scholarship
  • Kathryn Marie Yurechko –  Marshall Scholarship
  • Brandon W. Bishop ’26 –  U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship, Arabic

Scholarships Awards and Prizes:

  • Kathryn Marie Yurechko –  The James McDowell Scholarship

Departmental Awards:

  • Kathryn Marie Yurechko – The Computer Science Department Award
  • Gabriel Thomas Hogan ’26 – The Lenfest Center for the Arts Award
  • Gabriel Thomas Hogan ’26 – The Excellence in Artistic Management Award
  • Kathryn Marie Yurechko – The Young Scholarship in Philosophy
  • Kathryn Marie Yurechko – The John and Mimi Elrod Fellowship
  • Gabriel Thomas Hogan ’26 – The Michael K. and Linda Gorman Award
  • Jack Wilford d’Entremont- The Coaches and Captains Basketball Award
  • Matt Fritz ’25- William J. Sterns Improved Swimmer
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2023 Computer Science Degrees, Scholarships, Prizes and Awards

Congratulations to the Class of 2023 Computer Science Majors and Minors for their outstanding achievements!   Their accomplishments, along with the accomplishments of certain CS undergraduates  are listed here, as they appear in the Commencement Bulletin.

2023 Graduates:

Majors:

  • Abdelraham Hesham AboEitta – Bachelor of Science, Honors in Computer Science ( Thesis: “Hyperdimensional Computing for Gesture Recognitiion Using a Dynamic Vision Sensor”), Phi Beta Kappa; summa cum laude
  • Praise D. Apata – Bachelor of Science
  • Sujana Basnet- Bachelor of Science,  magna cum laude
  • Madison E. Clubb- Bachelor of Arts
  • Carson Brent Cooley- Bachelor of Science,  magna cum laude
  • Jared Alexander Cordova- Bachelor of Science
  • Ana Sophia Estrada Hamm- Bachelor of Arts,  Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
  • Dario Fumarola- Bachelor of Arts
  • Selihom Gobeze- Bachelor of Science
  • Daniel Kenji Kung- Bachelor of Science
  • Leslie Taylor Le- Bachelor of Science
  • Grace Murphy MacDonald- Bachelor of Science,  Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
  • Nobel Sintayehu Manye- Bachelor of Science
  • Ryan Davis Messick- Bachelor of Arts
  • Cong Danh Nguyen- Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
  • Nicholas Q. Nguyen- Bachelor of Science
  • Mesoma Ifechukwu Okolocha- Bachelor of Science
  • Jorge Baunner Soto-Ventura- Bachelor of Arts
  • Robert Taylor Tucker- Bachelor of Science, cum laude
  • Virginia Slater Weston- Bachelor of Science

Minors:

  • Peter McNulty Clyne- Bachelor of Science
  • Caleb Minjae Choe- Bachelor of Science
  • Harry Dodd Crutcher, Jr.- Bachelor of Science,  cum laude
  • Carl Lucas Erdmann- Bachelor of Arts
  • Sarah Louise Martin- Bachelor of Science
  • Robert Warren Seeds- Bachelor of Science
  • Nicholas Ransom Steinert- Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude
  • Colin James Whiting- Bachelor of Science, cum laude
  • Yoseph W. Wolde- Bachelor of Arts

Fellowships Received:

  • Ana Sophia Estrada Hamm ’22 – Fulbright U.S. Student Program, Israel

Departmental Awards:

  • Carson Brent Cooley- The Luther Seevers Birely Scholarship
  • Kathryn Marie Yurechko ’24- The James McDowell Scholarship
  • Grace Murphy MacDonald – The Computer Science Department Award
  • Nobel Sintayehu Manaye- The H. Thomas Williams, Jr. Undergraduate Research Award
  • Mesoma Ifechukwu Okolocha- Senior Bonner Scholars
  • Jackson Jacobs ’24- Richard Miller Cross Country Award
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2022 Computer Science Degrees, Scholarships, Prizes and Awards

Congratulations to the Class of 2022 Computer Science Majors and Minors for their outstanding achievements!   Their accomplishments, along with the accomplishments of certain CS undergraduates  are listed here, as they appear in the Commencement Bulletin.

2022 Graduates:

  • Luke Patrick Alli – Bachelor of Science
  • Theodore C. Bentley – Bachelor of Science
  • Samuel Thomas Bluestone – Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
  • Dominique Nicole Broomfield – Bachelor of Science
  • August Spencer Donovan – Bachelor of Arts
  • Ana Sophia Estrada Hamm
    Jackson Mark Gazin – Bachelor of Arts, Honors in Mathematics (Thesis: “Linear Algebraic Methods in Data Science and Neural Networks”)
  • Bryan Lawrence Hadley – Bachelor of Science
  • Jae-Ung Jung – Bachelor of Science
  • Tara Krishnadas Kakkaramadam – Bachelor of Science
  • Laurie A. Lee – Bachelor of Arts, cum laude
  • Elyssa M. McMaster – Bachelor of Arts, Honors in Art History (Thesis:  “Florence + The Machine:  A Computational Approach to Florentine Liturgical Manuscript Illuminations from the Late Trecento”)
  • Walter Ellis Millwood – Bachelor of Science
  • Garrett Montgomery Mize – Bachelor of Science, cum laude
  • Evan Lewis Phaup – Bachelor of Science
  • Joseph Paul Salerno – Bachelor of Science
  • Yoseph Mandefro Tamene – Bachelor of Science, magna cum laude
  • Finn Ellis Thorne – Bachelor of Science
  • Haochen Tu – Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
  • (Alyssa) Trang Thuy Vu – Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, Valedictorian
  • Scott Kenneth Walters – Bachelor of Arts
  • Taylor Ryan Witherell – Bachelor of Science

Fellowships Received:

  • Elyssa M. McMaster – Fulbright U.S. Student Program, Italy
  • Ana Sophia Estrada Hamm – U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship, Arabic

Scholarships, Awards, and Prizes:

  • (Alyssa) Trang Thuy Vu – The Robinson Award in Mathematics and Science

Departmental Awards:

  • Samuel Thomas Bluestone – The Computer Science Department Award
  • Ana Sophia Estrada Hamm – The Computer Science Department Award
  • Yoseph Mandefro Tamene –  The Computer Science Department Award
  • (Alyssa) Trang Thuy Vu – The Computer Science Department Award
  • Dominique Nicole Broomfield – The Linda Cooper and Bobby Henderson Prize
  • Haochen Tu – International Education, Certificate of International Immersion
  • Samuel Thomas Bluestone – Office of Jewish Life, The Jewish Learning Fellowship
  • Nicholas Ranson Steinert ’23 – The Economic Academic Excellence Award
  • Sujana Basnet ’23 – The Griffith Scholarship
  • Jackson J. Jacobs, ’24 – Richard Miller Cross Country Award
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Honors Thesis: Evolutionary Control of Micro Aerial Vehicles in Simulation– Coletta R. Fuller ’21

Coletta, a Johnson Scholar, double majored  in computer science and music, and minored in creative writing.  She presented her Honors Thesis on Evolutionary Control of Micro Aerial Vehicles in Simulation via Zoom on Wednesday April 14th.

This thesis examined the challenge of safely landing quadcopters in simulation, using OpenAI gym environments to evaluate various machine learning algorithms. The two main categories explored were Deep Reinforcement Learning and Evolutionary algorithms. While the success of the DRL approach motivated this work, the evolutionary angle is of more interest due to its roots in more realistic biological inspiration. One specific evolutionary approach, NEAT, had success in the three-dimensional version of the problem, while none of the DRL attempts were successful. The dominance of NEAT on this challenge, while impressive in contrast with DRL, also had reasonably comparable success to a heuristic, human engineered approach.

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2020 Computer Science Degrees, Scholarships, Prizes and Awards

Congratulations to the Class of 2020 Computer Science Majors and Minors for their outstanding achievements!

2020 Graduates:

KELLY ANNE AMAR (’20) – Bachelor of Arts
GEORGE BERNARD BARKER (’20) – Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
LOGAN McCRAY BRAND (’20) – Bachelor of Science
ROBERT COOPER BREITHAUPT (’20) –
JOSEPH LEO CALIHAN III (’20) – Bachelor of Science
MADUBUKO DEBERECHI CHIEDOZIE (’20) – Bachelor of Arts
WILL HARRIS CLARK(’20) – Bachelor of Arts , cum laude
RYAN NICOLAS COMPOLI (’20) – Bachelor of Science
PHILIP BENJAMIN DAVIS (’20) – Bachelor of Arts
ANGELA VERGARA DELOS REYES (’20) – Bachelor of Arts
MATTHEW MICHAEL DODSON (’20) – Bachelor of Science, cum laude
ZACHARY COLE FRANCIS (’20) – Bachelor of Arts
COLLIN REID GLATZ (’20) – Bachelor of Arts, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
EMILY FRANCES HAGEBOECK (’20) – Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude
KATHERINE POTTER HAMILL (’20) – Bachelor of Science, cum laude
JULIO CESAR HIDALGO LOPEZ (’20) – Bachelor of Science
MARSHALL McCALL HOWERTON (’20) – Bachelor of Arts
NGUYEN KHOI KIEU (’20) – Bachelor of Science, cum laude
ALLIE RENEE LEFKOWITZ (’20) – Bachelor of Arts, cum laude
BRIAN M. LEGARTH (’20) – Bachelor of Science
RYAN CAMPBELL LESHER (’20) – Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
RUINAN LIU (’20) – Bachelor of Science, cum laude
MAXWELL JAMES MASAITIS (’20) – Bachelor of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
WILLIAM ALLEN McCANN, JR. (’20) – Bachelor of Science
ABIGAIL KATHLEEN NASON (’20) – Bachelor of Science, Honors in Computer Science, (Thesis: “Generating Enjoyable Playlists Using Music Similarity and the A* Algorithm”), Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude
JUSTIN KAROL PUSZTAY (’20) – Bachelor of Science, cum laude
BETHANY ROSE REITSMA (’20) – Bachelor of Arts, cum laude
EMILY CHRISTINE ROCHE (’20) – Bachelor of Science
MICHAEL GRIFFIN SCOTT (’20) – Bachelor of Science
SHEPHERD MILLS SIMS (’20) – Bachelor of Science
TREVOR WAYNE STALNAKER (’20) – Bachelor of Science, Honors in Computer Science, (Thesis: “Procedural Generation of Metroidvania-Style Levels”), Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude
CHRISTOPHER BOYD SURRAN II (’20) – Bachelor of Science, magna cum laude
ANDREW JAMES DEVITT TAYLOR (’20) – Bachelor of Science
MITCHELL COOPER THOMAS (’20) – Bachelor of Arts, cum laude
JAMES DAVID WILSON (’20) – Bachelor of Science

Scholarships, Awards and Prizes

EMILY FRANCES HAGEBOECK (’20) – William D. McHenry Female Scholar-Athlete Award, Outstanding Women’s Swimming Award

JULIO CESAR HIDALGO LOPEZ (’20) – The James Jinkins Livesay, M.D. Premedical Award

ABIGAIL KATHLEEN NASON (’20) – The Computer Science Department Award

BETHANY ROSE REITSMA (’20) – The Washington and Lee University Orchestra Award, The John and Mimi Elrod Fellowship

ANGELA VERGARA DELOS REYES (’20) – The Studio Thesis Award

EMILY CHRISTINE ROCHE (’20) – Most Valuable Player Award (Women’s Soccer)

TREVOR WAYNE STALNAKER (’20) – The Franklin Society Scholarship, The Computer Science Department Award

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CSCI Major Azmain Amin ’17 Honors Thesis Presentation

Azmain Amin’s Honors Thesis is entitled “An Automated, Customizable Framework for Applying Genetic Algorithms to Generate Test Cases for Web Applications” and will be presented on Friday, April 7 at 3:30 pm in Parmly 405.

THESIS ABSTRACT: Web application testing is an integral part of the web application development process. Faults within a web application can damage a company’s reputation and lead to financial losses. Customers will lose confidence if they experience inconvenience. Rigorous testing is necessary to expose faults before production release. Test case generation is a time- and resource-consuming process. Testing requirements increase exponentially with code size, and it might be impossible to exhaustively test any sufficiently complex software. This is specially true of web apps where you have multiple platforms integrating together.

In this thesis, I propose the use of genetic algorithm to generate usage-based test cases. Genetic-algorithm-based test case generation requires considerably less resources and is customizable and automated. I modeled usage-based test cases (i.e., user sessions) as components of genetic algorithm, namely genes, chromosomes and genomes, and created a customizable and automated genetic-algorithm-based testing framework. I carried out several sets of experiments, running the genetic algorithm and tuning various parameters to evaluate the effect of each parameter on the resulting generated test suite. Our results show that genetic-algorithm-based test case generation is very cost effective. The test suite is considerably smaller in size compared to the initial collection of user sessions and still maintained high resource coverage.

 

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CSCI Major Johanna Goergen ’16 Thesis Defense

Date: 4/8/2016
Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Computer Science Dept.
(reception at 3:30)

Johanna Goergen ’16 will defend her Thesis on Friday, April 8th at 4pm in the CSCI Department.

“Leveraging Parameter and Resource Naming Conventions to Improve Test Suite Adherence to Persistent State Conditions”

A web application is a software application whose functionality can be accessed by users over the Internet via web browsers. As web applications take on vital and sensitive responsibilities, it is critical that web applications are well-tested and maintained before they are deployed to the public and with every subsequent update or change. A common approach to automating web application testing is test suite generation based on user sessions. Although these approaches to automated testing are promising,
they leave room for improvement in effectiveness due to their lack of adherence to requirements imposed by data outside of application code, such as data stored in databases. My objective is to contribute an approach to creating more effective web application test suites based on predicting the content of the application’s external data store(s) throughout testing.

 

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2015 COMPUTER SCIENCE SENIOR HONORS THESIS PRESENTATIONS

 

CSCIThesis.2
(Prof. Salan, Paul Jang, Bipeen Acharya, and Prof Sprenkle)

 

Senior Honors Thesis Presentations:

Friday, April 10, 3:45-4:45 p.m. in Parmly 405 

“Towards an Automated and Customizable Linear Cryptanalysis of a
Substitution-Permutation Network Cipher for Use in Embedded Systems”
Bipeen Acharya
and
“Customizable Method of Automatically Detecting Malicious User Activity
in Web Applications”
Paul Jang