Undergraduate
Awards to CCIS Undergraduates & Groups
• CCIS Students receive the William Jefferson Alcott, Jr. Award and Outstanding Co-op Award
The 40th annual Cooperative Education Awards were held on March 31st. The College of Computer and Information Science was proud that two of our senior students were recognized by such a competitive and prestigious honor.
Kenneth McGrady, a combined major in computer science and mathematics, received the William Jefferson Alcott, Jr. Award, which is presented to one senior within the university who utilizes his or her academic training in a creative way to make a positive contribution to society, and who has demonstrated exceptional achievement in cooperative education. It also recognizes the student's accomplished goals beyond the requirements of the University curriculum.
Between Ken’s co-op experiences at MITRE, Intuit and Pixar Animation Studios, his role as a research assistant in providing faster parsing technologies in compilers, and key player in the creation of Northeastern’s iPhone App “Discover Northeastern,” Ken is an individual who has made a significant impact to the college, university, and to all of the companies he has worked with on co-op. In addition, Ken’s involvement with ACM, CISters, NUEats, along with his role as Orientation Leader, RA and tutor, clearly demonstrate how he has gone above and beyond to make a lasting mark on the College of Computer and Information Science.
Alex Brick, a combined Bachelor of Science and Master of Science candidate in Computer Science, with a minor in mathematics, received the Outstanding Co-op Award for the college. With Alex’s two co-ops at Amazon, one of CCIS’s most sought after co-op positions, his demanding course of study, his research within the college and his study abroad in Japan, Alex has taken full advantage of everything Northeastern University has to offer. Additionally, Alex is a tour guide for the Admission Office and participates in the CCIS Fellow program where he mentors freshmen students and assists in the Overview 2 class. Alex embodies the ethic, spirit and can-do personality of a student who seizes all opportunity to make the most of his education.
It has been a privilege to have had the opportunity to work with both Ken and Alex over the last five years, and they truly will be missed. We look forward to hearing of their successes in the years to come, as they both head to Seattle, Ken to work at Hulu and Alex to work at Amazon.
• CCIS Wins 1st Place in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
A team of Northeastern University computer science and information assurance students has bested seven other teams from institutions around the United States to earn top honors in the 2010 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.
Northeastern’s team consisted of graduate students Weiwei Hu and Alagu Irulappan, and undergraduate students Marc Held, Shawn Smith, William Nowak and Channing Conger. Kevin Amorin, a lecturer in the College of Computer and Information Science, coached the team.
Now in its fifth year, the Cyber Defense Competition was held from April 16 to 18 in San Antonio, Texas. To win the top prize, known as the Alamo Cup, participants have to figure out ways to manage and protect a fictional company’s network infrastructure. Each team quickly assesses its network’s current protection level, then tries to fend off a series of cyber attacks.
Teams are judged on how well they detect and respond to outside threats, maintain their business’s operational needs, stay responsive to user demands, and meet service-level agreements for all critical Internet operations.
The Northeastern team started training in December for this year’s event. Smith, the Northeastern team captain, says the experiential-learning opportunities he and his teammates received at their various co-op jobs—which included working at Google and Microsoft—paid huge dividends during the competition.
“We can talk with one another about what we know,” Smith says. “I might not know how to do something, but, instead of having to search online for a few minutes, I can get a straight answer from one of my friends.”
The competition, the world’s largest college-level cyber-defense contest, provides students with practical experience and the opportunity to meet and interact with industry professionals. Universities use the event to evaluate the efficacy of their cyber-security curriculum. Even Howard Schmidt, the White House’s cybersecurity coordinator, attended the event to observe the teams at work.
Northeastern’s team has shown remarkable growth over the three years it has competed. In 2008, the team finished second in the Northeast regional contest. Last year, the team won the Northeast regional and took second in the national competition. This year, Northeastern defeated eight other teams in the regional in March before winning the national competition.
“We were kind of coming back with a vengeance, I guess,” says Smith, who has competed each of the last three years. “It felt really good to win.”
• Andrea Grimes named by CRA as Top Female Undergraduate in 2005
Andrea Grimes of the College of Computer and Information Science has won the top award in the Computing Research Association 2005 Outstanding Undergraduate Award competition. The male award was won by a student from MIT. Runners-up included students from institutions such as Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Columbia, Berkeley, and Harvard. The award is a prestigious one, because the Association is the primary organization that focuses on computer science research, covering issues of policy, information, human resources, and community. Its members include the PhD-granting computer science departments in the US and Canada. Andrea's award included a $1,000 cash prize that was presented at a major national research conference.
The award is primarily based on Andrea's research. In Professor Futrelle's laboratory, she built a key system for research on computational linguistics applied to the Biology literature. She also worked with Professor Tarasewich on Human-Computer Interaction privacy issues for mobile devices. As an undergraduate, Andrea co-authored three published papers and had two additional papers submitted.
Andrea's qualifications go well beyond her stellar academic record and other prizes to include instructing in a community center, mentoring local high school students, and prominent involvement in various choirs at Northeastern.
In the Fall of 2005, Andrea entered graduate school at Georgia Tech in the program for Human Centered Computing.
• Additional CRA Awards
The College of Computer and Information Sciences has had other successes in the CRA competition:
- In 2002, Jennifer McDonald received honorable mention for her work on automata simulation.
- In 2007, Jason Ansel was a finalist for his work on distributed and parallel computing.
- In 2008, Tanya Cashorali received honorable mention for her work on computing and genetics.
• Undergraduate Research
In addition to the students who have won CRA awards, many students have conducted research with faculty and have published papers in computing conferences and journals.
• Awards to the CCIS ACM StudentChapter
The CCIS ACM student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery has six international awards in the past eight years:
- 2010-2011: Outstanding Website
- 2007-2008: Outstanding Website
- 2006-2007: Outstanding Website
- 2005-2006: Outstanding School Service
- 2004-2005: Outstanding Activities
- 2002-2003: Outstanding Website
Over the same period, only one university worldwide has won as many as 2 awards (University of the Phillipines). Therefore, the achievement of the CCIS ACM student chapter in winning 4 awards is especially remarkable.
Below is a shapshot of members of the CCIS ACM student chapter taken after one of the talks sponsored by the chapter.
