On Saturday, May 10, 2008, the Department of Computer Science celebrated Spring 2008 commencement at a reception honoring undergraduates, graduates, friends and families, and faculty. Approximately 65 students completed a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and 37 graduate degrees were awarded. Special guests at the reception included Mrs. Anne Gorsline, wife of the first department head Dr. George Gorsline, and her daughter, Suzanne Gorsline-Hogan. The department also recognized several undergraduates and graduate students for achievements in scholarship and research.

Undergraduate Awards

Ian MacLean-Blevins and Tarish Smith were awarded the George Gorsline Memorial Scholarship.  Dr. Gorsline was the first head of the Department of Computer Science.  Dr. Gorsline died in 1987, and in his memory, his wife Anne and numerous grateful alumni established the George Gorsline Memorial Scholarship.  True to George’s spirit, this scholarship is given each year to a rising senior who has shown significant improvement in his or her grade point average from freshman year through junior year, and who have overcome obstacles to become a successful CS major. 

Ian says that as a freshman, he was just not committed nor motivated.  After freshman year Ian and Virginia Tech agreed he might benefit from some time off. It was during this time off that Ian took classes at a community college, worked at a local store, and experienced an attitude adjustment.  When he returned to Virginia Tech, he worked closely with his advisor, Libby Bradford, and participated in Project Success, a Virginia Tech program designed to help students be successful.  Ian says that through Project Success he learned to manage his time and refined his study skills.  In fact, after he completed Project Success, he returned as a Student Peer Facilitator to assist other students with acquiring skills they need to complete a degree at VT.  Elaine Humphreys, Coordinator of Project Success, calls Ian "a very special young man."  She also said "I am very proud of him and grateful to him for giving our students his time, care, and insights to help them be more successful."

 Dr. Dennis Kafura, Tarish Smith, and Mrs. Anne Gorsline

Tarish started at Virginia Tech in 1997 with plans to be a Chemical Engineer.  But her first year at Virginia Tech presented challenges both in and out of the classroom.   Tarish stated that "At the end of my first year in the university, I was officially part of what is known as the 'Square-root Club,' referring to the fact that the square root of my GPA was higher than my actual GPA (i.e., it was less than 1.0)."  Tarish worked in VT's Registrar's Office during her time off, and she said that working in the Registrar's Office refueled her desire to obtain her degree.  Working in the Registrar's Office also had given her insight on where she could turn for help.  So she re-entered classes again in 2003, this time as a CS major.  Tarish was up to the challenges this time, and she even made Dean's List Fall 2007.  Due to her hard work and commitment, she is no longer a card carrying member of the Square-root Club.

The CS Scholar Award is presented for academic achievement by a graduating senior.  This year, the award went to Anthony Romano.  Anthony completed degrees in Computer Science and Math.  While at VT, Anthony interned with BAE Systems, Network Appliance, and worked as a research assistant.  Anthony is headed to Palo Alto, CA, for graduate studies at Stanford.

The CS Department awards its Outstanding Senior Award to the student with the most impressive record of academic achievement, research and service to the department.  This year's Outstanding Senior is Jessica Whitley.  Jessica graduated as a Commonwealth Scholar with degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics, with a Biology minor.  She has completed undergraduate research in both Computer Science and in Plant Pathology, Physiology and Weed Science.  Dr. John Jelesko (PPWS) said "Her findings have resulted in major discoveries in the evolution of plant metabolism that will impact many areas of plant biology.  She is an excellent example of how students who cross major disciplines can make deep and fundamental scientific discoveries."

Jessica has been an active member of the Association of Women in Computing serving as Vice President, Grace Hopper chair, and Women in Computing Day committee co-chair.  She has represented the Department of CS on the Student Engineer's Council.  She is a member of Upsilon Pi Epsilon National Computer Science Honor Society, Pi Mu Epsilon National Mathematics Honors Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and a recipient of numerous academic scholarships, including the Anne and George Gorsline Scholarship Award.  We are also grateful to Jessica for her recruiting efforts on behalf of the Computer Science Department.  She has spent many weekend and evening hours at prospective student events to tell high school students and their parents about CS at VT. 

 Dr. Ed Fox, Mrs. Anne Gorsline, Daniel Cohn, and Suzanne Gorsline-Hogan

Daniel Cohn was one of two 2007/8 George Gorsline Award winners.  Daniel completed his degree requirements in the spring 2008 semester and will be working for eXMeritus Software in Fairfax after graduation. 

Graduate Awards 

The Graduate Program Committee made five awards to students during the commencement reception.   Outstanding Graduate Research Awards were presented to four students, including two Masters level students, Wesley Tansey and Miten Sampat, and two Doctoral Students, Matthew Curtis-Maury and Rong Ge.  Pardha Pyla received the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award. 

Dr. Eli Tilevich, accepting for Wesley Tansey, and Dr. Naren Ramakrishnan

Wesley Tansey has been referred to as a homegrown talent, since he completed his BS degree at VT.  He was so attached to VT that he decided to stay for an MS thesis under the direction of Dr. Eli Tilevich.  His work focused on automated software maintenance, i.e., the modification of software after delivery to correct faults, to adapt to new problems, or to improve performance.  Wesley's ideas for software maintenance have been featured in the most competitive international conferences like IPDPS and OOPSLA which have acceptance rates of less than 25%.  Wesley could not attend the commencement reception, but his advisor, Dr. Tilevich, accepted the Outstanding Graduate Student - Masters Award on his behalf.

Like Wesley, Miten Sampat is also a homegrown talent.  His research is in the area of location-aware mobile computing, building applications for handheld computers that know where they are.  His advisor, Dr. Scott McCrickard, says that Miten's greatest strength is in building bridges between people, both between departments at VT and between academics and industry.  This is best illustrated by Miten's 7 publications with 15 different co-authors from 3 different departments. 

He now works at a startup called feeva.com.  We know that Miten is rising through their ranks rapidly and working on many interesting projects.  We are expecting big things from Miten.

Matthew Curtis-Maury has made significant contributions to the emerging area of multi-core systems, i.e., chips that have more than one processor in a single package.  His dissertation, advised by Dr. Dimitris Nikolopoulos, provides a viable software migration path from traditional systems to multi-core systems.  This work appears in 13 papers, in practically every top conference or journal in this area and one of these papers was also awarded the best paper award from the first international workshop on openMP.  Matthew is assuming a senior engineering position at NetApp this month, where we are sure he will continue to be a leader in multi-core systems.

 Dr. Dennis Kafura and Rong Ge

Rong Ge's Ph.D. is in the area of high performance computing systems, advised by Dr. Kirk Cameron.  She focused on power-aware computing, and Rong's work was among the first to show conclusively that you can get power and energy savings without sacrificing performance.  She built one of the first power-aware high performance clusters from Dell laptops.  Rong has received numerous invitations and accolades, such as an invitation to participate in the computer architecture summer school held in Princeton in 2006 and she is an active member of the SPEC OSG power subcommittee that is tasked with creating power-related benchmarks.  

 Dr. Dennis Kafura and Dr. Pardha Pyla

Pardha Pyla received his Ph.D. in December 2007.  His contributions to the teaching mission of our department have been broad, deep, and very highly regarded.  He has served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for nine semesters, covering four different courses.  In addition, he has taught a junior level human-computer interaction course during summer semesters.  His average ranking assigned by supervising faculty members is 4.9 out of 5.0.  

Several examples of Dr. Pyla's teaching excellence were presented for this award.  Most recently, Pardha taught a graduate level course in Usability Engineering.  This innovative project linked graduate level courses in Usability Engineering and Software Engineering.  This work, which brought Pardha's own dissertation research into the classroom, is a fine example of how research and teaching excellence work together to advance computer science and our department.  

Additional Pictures from the Commencement Reception 

 Jennifer Kammer, Tarish Smith, Suzanne Gorsline-Hogan, Mrs. Anne Gorsline, Ian MacLean-Blevins

 Jay Lester (center) and family

 Ganesh Chunangad Narayanaswamy (left) and family, Dr. Cal Ribbens (right)

 Sriram Gopal, Sanket Bedare, and Dr. Naren Ramakrishnan 

 Dr. Godmar Back (left) with Tobias Wieschnowsky (right) and his family

 Dr. Ed Fox and Suzanne Gorsline-Hogan

 Scott Conner (middle) and his family

 Stuart Hood (left) and family

 Dr. Ed Fox and Jocelyn Casto

 Jessie Eaves, Ramya Ravichandar, her husband Ramakant, and Terry Arthur

 Will Randolph models the t-shirts given to graduates at the reception.

  Will Randolph (second from right) and family

  Ganesh Chunangad Narayanaswamy (right) and his parents

 Jessica Whitley (second from right) and guests

 Daniel Taylor (center) with his parents

Robert Lewis (right) and guests

Christopher Bowns and guest

 Ian MacLean-Blevins (center) with his parents

 Several students catch up during the commencement reception