A view of the world from the fourth floor of Parmly Hall
Ford Scott, Class of 2025, is majoring in computer science and minoring in digital culture and information. Ford is featured in a Columns article showcasing his educational experiences at W&L.
Noteworthy accomplishments are his founding the Cybersecurity Club and his summer internship with Input Output Global organization.
Check out the write up to learn more about Ford!
Katie Yurechko, ’24, a computer science and philosophy double major, was one of 51 Marshall Scholars chosen in 2023. She is the first Marshall Scholar at W&L!
The Marshall Scholarship program was created in 1953 by an Act of British Parliament as a thank-you to former U.S. Secretary of State General George Marshall and the United States for assistance under the Economic Recovery Act, better known as the Marshall Plan. The scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic merit, leadership potential and ambassadorial potential.
Katie will receive a scholarship that fully funds one to three years of study at UK universities. She will study at the University of Oxford and University College London.
Click here to read the full story.
https://columns.wlu.edu/wls-katie-yurechko-among-2024-class-of-marshall-scholars/
Congratulations, Katie!
On November 2 , the Computer Science Department held its first ever Capture the Flag event.
Capture the Flag (CtF) in computer security is an exercise in which participants attempt to find text strings, called “flags”, which are secretly hidden in purposefully-vulnerable programs or websites.
From unraveling cryptic codes to identifying vulnerabilities in simulated systems, student teams showcased their skills in ethical hacking and digital defense. CS’s CtF served to foster a dynamic cybersecurity community on campus.
The success of this initial session set the stage for future exciting and intellectually stimulating CtF competitions!
The Computer Science Dept. Halloween party took place on Nov. 7. The party, held at Professor Matthews’ house, was fun and festive!
Check out these party pics!
Computer Science Major, Katie Yurechko, ’24, provides a unique and compelling perspective on the use of social media in her feature “Step Away from Your Screen”.
Since this article was created exclusively for the Alumni Magazine, it does not yet exist on the W&L website. A “go” link has been created that goes directly to Katie’s story via the ISSUU online platform flipbook.
Happy reading!https://columns.wlu.edu/in-the-lead-step-away-from-your-screen/
Katie Yurechko, ’24, is a finalist for the Truman Foundation!
Created by Congress in 1975, the Foundation was President Harry S. Truman’s idea. A pragmatic Midwesterner who did not attend college, President Truman did not want a brick-and-mortar monument. Instead, he encouraged a living memorial that would give life to the values of service that encompassed his career. In that spirit, the Truman Foundation supports Americans answering the call to serve. The Truman Foundation identifies aspiring leaders at an important inflection point in their development (college) and recognizes and rewards their commitments to careers in public service.
The selection committee appointed 199 students from 133 institutions to interview with the Foundation’s Regional Review Panels between March 2nd and April 4th, 2024. In 2023, the Truman Foundation received 705 applications from 275 institutions.
Congratulations, Katie!
Professor Matthews’ W23 Computer Graphics course completed ray tracer images for their final project. Ray tracers use reversed light rays and linear algebra to simulate the real world, including mirrored objects and refractive objects. While pretty, images rendered by a ray tracer take a very long time to finish. These images took DAYS to complete!
Ray tracer images
CSCI 340 Ray Tracer Projects are on full display at the entrance to the Computer Science Department.
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 2023 Computer Science Department SRS students, their faculty supervisors and descriptions of their projects:
Professor Taha Khan:
Professor Khan had 3 SRS students this summer — Bianca Pham ’26, Sarah Lathrop ’25 and James Xia ’26. All three worked on the same project that focused on understanding how Internet users perceive what should happen to their data post bereavement. They also supported my AIM cybersecurity experience.
Professor Sara Sprenkle:
Professor Sprenkle also had 3 Summer Research Scholars — Petra Ilic ’24, Lakpa Sherpa ’25 and Ignas Volcokas ’25. Below are the details about their projects.
Petra Ilic ’24, “Paying Down Technical Debt in the Ancient Graffiti Project” The Ancient Graffiti project began in 2013 as an online tool to study the lives of the common people in ancient Rome. In the ten years since then, new features and content have been added—as well as technical debt. Petra focused on making the application easier to develop and maintain for the next ten years.
Lakpa Sherpa ’25, “Detecting Anomalous Behavior through Clustering WebApplication User Sessions”. More than 30% of web traffic is bots trying to collect data or perform attacks to prevent the smooth delivery of services. Lakpa developed an automated framework to explore clustering to identify anomalous behavior.
Ignas Volcokas ’25, “Generating Cost-Effective Test Cases for WebApplications using Genetic Algorithms.” Web applications are popular and must be reliable and therefore must be thoroughly tested before every release. Since testing takes time, we want to execute the most cost-effective test suites. Ignas explored a variety of test-suite generating algorithms, with a focus on genetic algorithms, and compared the effectiveness of the generated test suites.
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.
Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) was founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary. Its motto is “Love of learning is the guide of life.” The Gamma of Virginia Chapter was chartered at W&L in 1911.
The PBK chapter at Washington and Lee University welcomed 49 members of the junior and senior classes at the Phi Beta Kappa/Society of the Cincinnati Convocation on March 31. Of those initiates, the following computer science majors are from the Class of 2023 and 2024:
2023
Grace MacDonald
Dan Nguyen
2024
Katie Yurechko
Congratulations!