Naka Assoumatine, Class of 2025, is double majoring in computer science and economics and minoring in data science.
During Summer 2024, Naka had the incredible opportunity to give back to her community by introducing coding, and programming to kids at the middle school she attended in Togo—Menelik2. Her goal was to inspire these young minds to see computer science as a path for creative expression and a field with promising job opportunities—an area still largely unfamiliar to many people in Togo.
Washington and Lee University, in partnership with the Johnson Program, is proud to support this initiative.
Congratulations, Naka, on your exciting achievements!
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 2024 Computer Science SRS students, their faculty supervisors and descriptions of their projects:
Professor Taha Khan:
Professor Khan had 2 SRS students this summer — Allison Badeaux ’28 and Nabil Youssef, ’26.  The topic for their research was “Internet Censorship: A Self-Destructing Prophecy”.
The internet is a crucial medium for communication, information sharing, and freedom of expression. However, internet censorship poses significant challenges to these aspects. The study explores the multifaceted impacts of censorship on users’ behaviors, attitudes, and strategies to bypass restrictions.Â
Allison and Nabil’s research examined the effectiveness of censorship and its potential counterproductive effects. While censorship aims to control information flow and maintain social order, it often leads to unintended consequences like increased efforts to circumvent restrictions and the spread of alternative information channels. By analyzing user reactions, the study seeks to determine whether censorship achieves its goals or inadvertently promotes greater resistance and innovation in information dissemination.
Allison Badeaux ’28
Nabil Youssef, ’26
Professor Simon Levy:
Tiffany Guo ’26 and James Xia ’26 worked with Prof. Simon Levy on a project entitled “Neuromorphic Control for Micro Aerial Vehicles”. Tiffany and James’s primary responsibility was developing a quadcopter simulator in Python, to aid in testing of new control algorithms. The eventual goal is to integrate this simulator (and an actual quadcopter) with the neuromorphic control algorithms that Prof. Levy is developing as a visiting professor this summer in the TeNNLab at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Tiffany Guo ’26.
James Xia ’26
Professor Liz Matthews:
Professor Matthews had 2 SRS students this summer — Han Huynh ’25 and Hamza Zia, 26.  Both Han and Hamza collected data on video game enjoyment in games containing procedural generation. This involves recruiting participants to play an infinite running game and record their responses to an enjoyment questionnaire, then using statistical analysis to determine any impact the procedural generation may or may not have on enjoyment of the video game.
Han Huynh, ’25Hamza Zia ’26
Professor William Tolley:
Professor Tolley had two projects with a total of four students this summer. The objectives, goals and direction for each project, along with the student research students are listed here.
Project One:Â “Cryptographic Signal Integrity via Information-Theoretic Constructs” – Janeet Bajracharya (2026), Mark Holden (2025)
Janeet Bajracharya ’26Mark Holden ’25
Objective:
This research endeavors to establish a framework for the secure dissemination of radio signals, ensuring integrity verification by external entities without disclosing the underlying raw data. The approach integrates advanced cryptographic constructs with robust signal feature extraction methodologies, employing fuzzy hashing and locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) within an error-tolerant paradigm.
Research Goal:
The principal challenge addressed is the circumvention of legal constraints on signal sharing through the application of zero-knowledge proof analogs to continuous analog signals. By leveraging wavelet transform techniques, we aim to optimally decompose and isolate salient features of the signal, minimizing the impact of stochastic noise. These features are then encoded into a cryptographic hash, facilitating secure, non-invasive verification across different instances.
Future Directions:
Ongoing research will focus on refining transformation techniques to enable the derivation of a unique signal fingerprint from its hash, advancing towards a framework where the hash itself encapsulates sufficient information-theoretic properties to characterize the original signal with high fidelity. This includes the potential to identify specific types of traffic, such as VPN traffic, thereby broadening the applicability of the methodology in network security and traffic analysis.
Project two: “Machine Learning for Censorship and Surveillance Detection in Android Applications” – Ciel Morrill (2026), Medaly Cardenas Retamozo (2025)
Ciel Morrill ’26
Medaly Cardenas Retamozo ’25
Objective:
This project aims to adapt and apply advanced machine learning techniques, originally developed by Google for identifying vulnerable code and malicious executables in Android applications, to the detection of censorship and surveillance mechanisms. Given the impracticality of reverse engineering a vast number of apps, this approach leverages machine learning to automate the identification process.
Research Goal:
The initial phase involves identifying and analyzing a set of Android apps known to contain censorship features. These apps will serve as a baseline for training machine learning models. The goal is to extrapolate from this initial dataset, enabling the model to scan and categorize thousands of other apps to detect similar censorship or surveillance-related behaviors. By refining these techniques, the project seeks to uncover hidden information control mechanisms within a broad spectrum of apps, facilitating more efficient and large-scale analysis of potentially censored content or surveillance activity.
Future Directions:
The ongoing research will focus on refining the machine learning models to enhance their accuracy and scalability. This includes integrating more sophisticated techniques, such as deep learning and natural language processing, to detect increasingly subtle and complex censorship and surveillance mechanisms. Additionally, the scope of the project may expand to include other platforms and types of digital content beyond Android apps, broadening the impact of the research on uncovering information controls across diverse digital environments.
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 –Â 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
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!
outside decorations – spooky!
costume contest winners (L-R). Han Huynh (Little Bo Peep), Beza Mengistu (spider hat!)
Group photo! (l-r). first row: Prof. Sprenkle, Xander, Han, Bianca, Naka, Carolyn, Prof. Matthews second row: Beza, Lakpa, Janeet, Brenda, Prof. Watson, Evan, Billy, Colin and DanishColin (or, Ken) and Billy (channeling Ted Lasso), chatting
Mark and Michelle show off their CS-themed costumes.
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.
The CS Department completely renovated and refurbished its main computer lab over the summer.  This “active-learning first” classroom is designed to maximize the educational experience!
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.
Bianca Pham ’26James Xia ’26
Sarah Lathrop ’25
(L-R) Sarah, Bianca, James and Professor Khan
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 Iliac ’24
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
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 Volcakas ’25
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.
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
