2022 Computer Science Summer Research Scholars

The Summer Research Scholars (SRS) program supports students participating in collaborative research supervised by W&L faculty. The program aims to encourage the development of research techniques within a particular discipline, to promote the active acquisition of knowledge, and to stimulate student interest in inquiry.

Here are the 2022  Computer Science Department’s SRS students,  their faculty supervisors and descriptions of their projects:

Professor Liz Matthews:

Sarah Martin, ’23:
-Sarah is implementing statistical analysis using nonparametric methods on data collected about gamer skill levels and features.
Danish Bokhari, ’24:≠
-Danish is studying design and data collection about video game enjoyment metrics for games containing procedural generation.

 

 

Professor Simon Levy:

Matt Stock≠ ’23
Matt and Prof. Levy are working on adding a RaspberryPi (“Internet of Things”) project  to enable a RealAnt robot to move about wirelessly and learn some interesting behaviors.

Professor Sara Sprenkle:

≠Grace MacDonald ’23:
Grace is developing new features and functionality for The Ancient Graffiti, a perfect fit for a computer science major with a classics minor!  She is improving AGP’s usability on mobile devices and will work on a variety of projects to make more graffiti available for public viewing.

≠

Armando Mendez-Anastasio ’24:
Armando is developing ChemTutor, an online chemistry tutorial to help students transition to college-level chemistry.  He will add new functionality to the site and work on making ChemTutor more easily deployed to the cloud.

≠Lakpa Sherpa ’25:
Lakpa is exploring how to automatically identify anomalous behavior in accesses to web applications.  He will be running automated experiments and analyzing lots of data.

 

 

Professor Cody Watson:

≠Abdelrahman AboEitta ’23:
Abdul and Professor Watson are working on a deep learning model that can identify and automatically fix security vulnerabilities in java source code methods.

 

Bennett Ehret, ’24:
Bennett and Professor Watson are working on a deep learning solution to automatically generate code documentation, specifically code comments, for source code methods that implement machine learning models.

≠
Mohamed Elhussiny

 

 

Mohamed Elhussiny’24 and Leyti Ndiaye ’26:
Along with Professor Watson, Mohamed and Leyti are building a variety of machine learning methods to automatically identify negative in-game behavior within the popular video game League of Legends.

 

Professor Taha Khan:

Jack Bosco ’24:

Jack is working on better understanding how Internet users perceive what should happen to their data post bereavement. Jack is developing a user study over the summer.

Mohamed Elhussiny’24:

Mohamed  is working on a project that involves analyzing at GitHub repositories to understand the significance of class methods are semantically≠ similar and investigate their security and usability implications. 

 

Spring Term ’22 – Professor Watson’s class takes a “Walk Through the Ages”

 

CSCI 257-01: “A Walk Through the Ages: Using Artificial Intelligence to Understand the Evolution of Exercise,” .  in this S22 course, students monitor movements on exercise trackers and examine patterns of exercise, movement and health impacts while researching the evolution of human exercise.

This course is co-taught by assistant professor of computer science Cody Watson and assistant professor of biology Natalia Toporikova.

Click on the link to learn more!

https://columns.wlu.edu/life-on-two-legs/?fbclid=IwAR0vw1ii22RdQkUW3PpuO1fxn-yH_NhuyLUwuk6VZ-8uokJ3T9YR337n2WU

Computer Science Game Demo Day 2022!

Mark your calendar for Game Demo Day!

Students in Professor Matthews CSCI 319 Video Game Design class  will showcase their final games.

Game Demo Day will take place on Saturday, April 9 from 10:30am – 12:30pm in the Science Center Great Hall.

Everyone is welcome!

 

Spotlight on Summer Research Scholars

Abdelrahman AboEitta ’23, CS Major
Abdel developed the latest version of ChemTutor (https://chemtutor.wlu.edu/), an online tutorial to help prepare students for college-level chemistry.  ChemTutor was developed by faculty and students at 4 small, liberal arts institutions and is funded by the Associated Colleges of the South.  Beyond developing new functionality for instructors, Abdel used Docker to deploy ChemTutor on Amazon Web Services so that it is easier for other institutions to deploy.

Sujana Basnet, ’23, CS Major
Irina Koleva, ’22, Neuroscience Major
Sujana and Irina completed a survey of academic research on video game experience categories, designed and conducted a user study to collect data based on the survey, and ran statistical analysis of the user study data. Also, they began work on an academic paper to be submitted to an appropriate venue in the Fall.

William Xue ’24
Will’s project name was:  Cloudsweeper: A Tool for Personal Cloud Management. The personal cloud is a convenient and affordable way to retain and share files over time. However, as time passes, some files lose their relevance. Crucially, some files that are no longer useful may still contain sensitive information, creating risks due to data breaches, lost devices, and account takeovers.  During the Summer of 2021, Will used his Python and web design skills to work both on the front and backend of the design of Cloudsweeper, a web application which incorporates machine learning to highlight potentially sensitive and useless files in individuals’ cloud accounts. The current version is live at: https://cloudsweeper.app.  Currently, the app only supports the Google Drive cloud platform. Will plans to continue work with the team to integrate the app with support across multiple cloud platforms and conduct future research studies by using the app as a data collection tool.

Billy Tobin ’24
Billy’s project name was : An Empirical Evaluation of Method Signature Similarity in Codebases.  Modern programming languages have revolutionized the way in which software developers design and develop computer programs. These languages provide individuals with user-friendly capabilities that enhance the productivity of developers while ensuring minimal code redundancy. One such feature of programming languages is method overloading.Billy spent the summer of 2021 empirically evaluating the pervasiveness of overloaded methods in large-scale repositories understanding their relationship over time, as repositories grow. Based on the initial results, Billy plans to extend his work to understand the usability aspects of overloaded methods and determine where they may have correctness, security, performance, and complexity implications.

Spotlight on CSCI senior major George Barker ’20

George, a double major in both computer science and chemistry, worked this past summer with Professor Sprenkle to develop a web application that specializes in tutoring students in the basics of general chemistry.

Click the link to learn more about George and his achievements!

https://columns.wlu.edu/good-chemistry/?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=features

 

CSCI 2018 Scholarships, Prizes, and Awards

Congratulations to the following Computer Science students as recipients of this year’s scholarships, awards, and prizes:

REBECCA MELKERSON (’18) – The Computer Science Department Award and The Walter LeConte Stevens Scholarship

JULIANNE CAMPBELL (’18) – The Third-Generation Student Achievement Award

ALICIA MARTINEZ (’18) – The James S. Wood Prize in German

LEX McGRIFF (’18) – The Alexander Thomas Boehling ’10 Memorial Award

KARISHMA PATEL (’18) – The Business Administration Department Scholarship

 

MAX GOLD (’19) – The James McDowell Scholarship

SARAH ANNE TROISE (’19) – National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates

 

COLLIN GLATZ (’20) – The B. S. Stephenson Scholarship

EMILY HAGEBOECK (’20) – Women’s SwimmingOutstanding Women’s Swimming Award

 

GILLEN BECK (’18 Minor)– National Collegiate Athletic Association Scholarship,
The H. Thomas Williams Jr. Undergraduate Research Award and the William D. McHenry Male Scholar-Athlete Award

WALKER BRAND (’18 Minor) – The Brackett Priddy Prize,  the Larry Stuart Memorial Award and the Wink Glasgow Spirit and Sportsmanship Award

AUSTIN CHOI (’18 Minor) – The Brackett Priddy Prize

RAM RAVAL (’18 Minor) – The Accounting Department Scholarship

TOMMY THETFORD (’18 Minor) – P. R. Press Brown Most Valuable Male Athlete and in Men’s Swimming, Memorial Swimming Award

PENGRUI WANG (’19 Minor)  – The George Addison Baxter Scholarship and The Garrett Economics Prize

 

Descriptions of each scholarship, award and prize can be found on the W&L website.

CSCI Major Janie Martin ’18 –Breakthrough Achievement at Hackathon!

Senior Janie Martin attended Rice University’s 7th annual Hackathon this past weekend in Houston with the goal of trying to solve some of the biggest problems in health care today.  The Hackathon competitors were in a 36 hour race against each other to develop new software and hardware to solve challenges identified by doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital. About 400 hackers competed for various prizes.

For Janie, the competition provided an opportunity to solve a medical problem that she herself once suffered from, encephalitis.  Janie and her teammates developed a product called Memory Eyes which is a device that uses image detection and facial recognition software to assist with cognitive disorders.  Cognitive impairment is a major component of encephalitis.  As Janie explains it, with encephalitis,  “You could be standing in a grocery store talking to someone when suddenly you have no idea where you are or who they are.” “With a press of a button, Memory Eyes will tell you who you’re talking to, where you are and remind you what you were there to get.”

Click on the link below to read more about Janie’s accomplishments and other cutting edge health care successes of Hackathon!

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Rice-University-s-Hackathon-work-to-solve-health-12225209.php

 

CSCI Major Mary Catherine Greenleaf ’19: Digital Humanities Experience

Mary Catherine, a Computer Science and Studio Art major, describes her recent participation in a Digital Humanities project, and shares her enthusiasm for blending art with computer science.

 

https://columns.wlu.edu/preserving-snippets-smidgens-and-scraps-of-history/

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.

 

CSCI Summer Research Spotlight

screenshot_191
Find out what Azmain Amin, a junior who worked with Professor Sara Sprenkle and fellow junior Mina Shnoudah did over the summer….

http://wlu.edu/transformative-education?feature=true&id=x13186