Faculty, Student, & Department Spotlights
Faculty Focus
WWU's Hanxiang Du and the University of Florida partner to study AI-enhanced learning
WWU Assistant Professor of Computer Science Hanxiang Du is studying how artificial intelligence can enhance learning in math students as part of her research within the Science, Math and Technology Education (SMATE) program.
The grant funding this research, “ALTER-MATH: AI-augmented Learning by Teaching to Enhance and Renovate Math Learning,” will analyze how students interact with AI-powered learning tools and the effect of AI on students’ self-efficacy and academic performance.
The $24,780 grant is funded by the University of Florida and will utilize Math Nation, a platform designed to help improve algebra proficiency in Florida high schools. The platform uses large language models to transform students from passive learners to proactive teachers.
The AI agents can be used to change students’ understanding of technical concepts and perception of themselves, Du said.
“The system adopts the learning-by-teaching framework and incorporates learning science theories and instructional strategies, such as conceptual change and social psychological interventions, to engage and guide students toward deeper math understanding,” she said.
An example of these interventions is the ability for the AI to generate prompts that guide students through the problem-solving process. It can also offer real-time assessment and feedback to correct mistakes and address misconceptions to help deepen student understanding. Students’ anxiety and confusion are expected to be lessened through collaboration and discussion with the support of AI, Du said.
One barrier for AI-enhanced learning is concerns over the trustworthiness of information, and research has pointed out students do not sufficiently trust AI when learning new concepts, Du said. Through her research, Du hopes to find ways to empower educators on how to integrate AI into their classrooms and build student trust.
“[Large language models] do not take responsibility for students' learning, but educators do,” she said. “I believe our work about how to integrate AI in support learning provides valuable insights for educators and researchers about approaching AI for education, as well as practical references about what to know, and potentially how to, when integrating AI for learning.”
The project is currently at the development and data collection stage, but Du hopes the study will allow researchers to utilize data-mining techniques and learning theories to identify meaningful learning behaviors that can be widely applied in K12 math education or even in a broader context for K12 STEM education, she said.
“By exploring the possibilities of applying AI for large-scale learning platforms like Math Nation, we hope to provide insights about how AI can be used to support formal education, identify the advantages and challenges of this method, develop a practice model for training teachers to teach with AI, and present a model of combining research-based pedagogies and advanced learning technologies to support learning,” Du said.
Past Faculty Spotlights
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) recently published a paper co-authored by WWU undergraduate student Skyler Crane, Associate Professor Scott Wehrwein, and external political scientist collaborators Mike Kenwick, Junghyun Lim, Beth Simmons. Using computer vision to analyze aerial imagery, the researchers estimated the legibility—or detectability—of all of the world's international borders at sub-kilometer granularity, yielding new insights and confirming established wisdom in the study of border politics. Over the project's five-year history, it saw substantial contributions from a total of seven WWU undergraduate researchers. The PNAS paper is available online.
Tik Tok has been issued an 11th-hour reprieve by President Trump, who has pledged to save the platform. What about Tik Tok resulted in its near ban, and is it really a national security threat? Today's One Quick Question, a semi-regular feature which engages WWU faculty on topics on national or regional interest, was fielded by Computer Science's Erik Fretheim, director of Western's cybersecurity program.
What is it about Tik Tok that makes it a threat to national security?
"TikTok poses threats to US national security and to individual security in a variety of ways. First, TikTok has been and continues to be used in an extensive manner to influence public opinion. This has been shown to be done through censorship, as with Tiananmen Square and the Uighurs, as well as flooding the app with postings of views favorable to China’s aims," said Fretheim.
"Second, the Chinese have a long history of collecting, collating and using information about individuals to their advantage. They have in the past used this to coerce people into spying for them, and to creating disordered situations.
Third, TikTok is used to collect information which while it may seem innocuous individually, when combined provides the ability to attack individuals financially and in other ways. For example, most people have clues to their passwords on their social media. This combined with information about where they do business, and their schedule can be used to create a cyber attack which cleans out a bank account, or investments, without the user being aware.
While many of these risks exist with non-Chinese apps, with TikTok, there are not only financial, but ideological incentives to abuse."
Dr. Hanxiang Du, jointly appointed in Computer Science and the SMATE program at Western Washington University, has made notable contributions to educational research with four recently accepted articles in prominent academic journals. Each article offers unique insights into learning behaviors, digital environments, and online community interactions.
The first study, titled "What Distinguishes Students’ Engineering Design Performance: Design Behaviors, Design Iterations, and Application of Science Concepts," is accepted for publication in the Journal of Science Education and Technology. Co-authored by Dr. H. Du, G. Zhu, W. Xing, and C. Xie, this research investigates the key factors that impact students' success in engineering design. Through an analysis of design behaviors and iterations, along with the use of scientific principles, the study identifies distinct elements that differentiate high-performing students from others, providing insights for educators aiming to strengthen design skills in science and engineering curricula.
Dr. Du also contributed to another study, "Mining Teacher Informal Online Learning Networks: Community Commitment in Unstructured Learning Environments," accepted in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. This research, co-authored by G. Zhu and W. Xing, examines informal online learning communities where teachers collaborate and exchange knowledge without structured guidance. It reveals how teachers engage and commit to learning within these networks, contributing valuable information on the ways educators build professional knowledge outside formal environments. The article is now available online via Wiley’s digital library here.
Dr. Du and collaborators X. Huang, J. Zheng, S. Li, T. Zhong, C. Hou, G. Zhu, and S.P. Lajoie explore social annotation and emotional tone in the third paper, "Investigating the Effect of Emotional Tone on Learners’ Reading Engagement and Peer Acknowledgment in Social Annotation," which has been accepted by the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. This study examines how different emotional tones in annotations affect students’ engagement and recognition of peer contributions. Findings suggest that emotional tone in social annotations can significantly influence reading engagement, fostering a more interactive and supportive learning environment.
Finally, Dr. Du and collaborators Udokop, D., CS Graduate Student & Pei, B. (2025, February). "Live Coding Prompts Engagement, But Not Necessarily Grades." In Proceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). This work presents the use of live coding in an introductory level CS course to better understand its impact on novice learners and their perceptions of the strategy.
Together, these publications highlight Dr. Du’s dedication to advancing educational technology, collaborative learning, and engineering education, with practical implications for educators, instructional designers, and academic communities worldwide."
Story by Whitney Morrison, Collection and Technology Manager, SMATE
Dr. Sharmin Honored With Arlan Norman Award.
Associate Professor Moushumi Sharmin is the recipient of the University's Arlan Norman Award for Excellence in Mentoring for Graduate Students. Congrats Moushumi!
Dr. Tsikerdekis selected as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar
Associate Professor Michael Tsikerdekis will spend 6 months in Greece in 2025 to research implementing a version of the Public Infrastructure Security Cyber Education System (PISCES — https://pisces-intl.org/) at the University of Macedonia (https://www.uom.gr/en), Thessaloniki, Greece, working with professor Ioannis Mavridis (https://www.uom.gr/en/mavridis). PISCES is a U.S.-based non-profit corporation and program supported by various organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security, state governments, and industry partners to provide free security monitoring to municipalities and boost the education of cybersecurity students.
The goal is to understand the challenges of jump-starting such a program and provide training and support. This also includes studying how students learn to perform as cybersecurity analysts when monitoring real-world traffic. Research on how to effectively prepare the new generation of cybersecurity professionals to address the cybersecurity job gap and build bridges across the two countries is a larger long-term objective of this project.
The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, which is the U.S. government’s flagship program of international educational and cultural exchange, sends approximately 800 American scholars and professionals each year to approximately 130 countries. In these nations, they deliver lectures and/or engage in research across a diverse range of academic and professional disciplines.
Fuqun Huang, PhD
Dr. Fuqun Huang was recognized by the IEEE Education Society and received the “New Faculty Fellow Award” at the IEEE ASEE Frontiers in Education Annual Conference 2023 (FIE 2023) “for demonstrating outstanding contributions to the field of engineering and computing education and scholarship”.
Dedicated to enhancing the reliability, safety, and security of computer systems, Dr. Huang addresses the pressing issues of poor software quality and security concerns, estimated to cost the U.S. a staggering $2.41 trillion in 2022. While traditional software engineering focuses on process improvement, Dr. Huang's pioneering work introduces innovative approaches to proactively tackle bottleneck problems.
As the trailblazer behind the emerging field of “Human Errors in Software Engineering,” Dr. Huang initiated this interdisciplinary area in 2011, offering breakthroughs in various domains, including software fault early forecasting based on human errors, requirement criteria based on human errors, defect prevention strategies based on human errors, fault tolerance design based on human errors, defect debugging and detection methods based on human errors, and groundbreaking interdisciplinary experiments blending programming and psychology.
Passionate about imparting interdisciplinary knowledge, Dr. Huang is launching a groundbreaking course, “Human Errors in Software Engineering,” at Western Washington University in Spring 2024. This course, the first of its kind globally, aims to equip both undergraduate and graduate students with valuable insights into this interdisciplinary field. One specific component of the course, “Promoting Students’ Cognitive Ability to Identify Human Error-prone Scenarios in Programs,” earned recognition from IEEE Education Society at FIE 2023.
Furthermore, Dr. Huang is spearheading a series of Capstone Projects in “Human Errors in Software Engineering” at Western Washington University. She welcomes senior undergraduates and graduates interested in contributing to cutting-edge research to join her research team.
Caroline Hardin, PhD
School districts across the country need more secondary computer science teachers, especially those who share the identities, values, and lived experiences of the students they teach. However, pathways for preparing and supporting computer science teachers are only just emerging, and many are struggling to recruit promising teachers into the profession and retain them long term. This project will create a consortium of emerging pre-service programs across the Pacific Northwest to address strengthen and mature computer science teaching pathways in four ways: 1) organizing and sharing information about teaching pathways, 2) identifying and resolving key barriers to pathways that aspiring teachers face, 3) supporting computers science teacher community building in partnership with new and existing computer science teachers association chapters, and 4) supporting administrative leaders who manage and grow these pathways.
The project’s approach is to build an evidence-based networked improvement community, which deeply engages stakeholders across the region to identify opportunities for change, develop sustainable cross-institutional coordination practices, and use research as one tool of many to inform approaches to change. Research will particularly focus on answering 1) who is and isn’t informed about CS teaching pathways, and why; 2) what barriers aspiring teacher with identities marginalized in CS face in pursuing CS teaching careers; 3) how community gatherings amongst teachers with marginalized identities can support teacher retention; and 4) how solidarity amongst teacher education administrative leaders can support sustainability of pathways. These questions will be posed across urban and rural divides, helping to inform how values, communities, and state politics shape equitable access to computer science education in secondary schools across the Pacific Northwest.
This is a collaborative award between University of Washington (PI Amy Ko), Western Washington University (Co-PI Caroline Hardin), Central Washington University, Washington State University, Whitworth University, University of Oregon, and Boise State University. WWU"s share of the award is $230,000.
Dr. Hearne was integral to the evolution of the department over the course of his thirty plus years at Western. The CS department had its start in Bond Hall in the 1980s, at which time only a handful of students were graduated each year. Now Computer Science graduates upward of 180 students, across multiple degrees, and even a graduate program. Dr. Hearne was there for it all, championing and often spearheading the many changes that have culminated in the thriving department that CS is today.
Dr. Hearne's contributions include service to the college and university as well. He served two terms as chair of ACC, taught, with Peter Smith, a faculty member in the library, the first university course in the world - as far we could figure out - on how to use the internet (this was before the web when tools were very unwieldy [WAIS, GOPHER, etc]. co-wrote (with George Mobus, a CS faculty member of yore) the grant that instituted the Internet Studies Center, originally articulated its mission, and served as its director twice. Dr. Hearne also served as President of the Faculty Club and, as Treasurer, kept it alive for, lo,these two decades, and in this way promoted exchange between Faculty, Classified Staff and Administrators across campus. He served as director fo the Center for East Asian Studies for four years and during that time taught an overload class (of ~80 students) in the high culture of China and Japan every quarter to keep the program solvent. It was primarily for this service that he received the Simpson Bridging Award. He taught in the Honors Program many times, such classes as Technologies of Intellect, Quantitative History, Narratology and The Chinese World View, and he supervised a CS senior project group in the Internet Studies Center that created Classfinder, which is still in use today by all Western students who register for classes.
Accessibility is a software requirement that makes access to digital technologies equitable for people with disabilities. Accessibility skills, if covered at all, are usually covered in elective courses in computer science programs. In collaboration with Dr. Kristen Shinohara at Rochester Institute of Technology and Dr. Catherine Baker at Creighton University, we work on finding innovative ways to cover accessibility in core CS courses. We target programming topics such as data structures, computer systems, and object-oriented programming. We modify the lessons in a way that infuses accessibility knowledge while keeping the original topic covered as intended. We work with faculty on adding the accessibility component to their programming courses. We support faculty by creating any needed teaching materials, such as assignment narrative, skeleton code, solution, etc. Please reach out via GitHub if you want to participate or learn more about this project.
Student Spotlight
Undergraduate student Lars Olt gave a talk on a machine learning project at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. His ongoing work with Western's Mars Lab focuses on automating the selection of geologically relevant regions within imagery from Mastcam-Z, an imager aboard NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars.
Lars has interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the past two summers, working across various departments, including Cryogenics and Planetary Science. This summer, he will work with Spacecraft Thermal Engineering, supporting a heat rejection system team and developing tools to mine thermal flight data for the ongoing Europa Clipper mission, heading to Jupiter's moon Europa!
Past Student Spotlights
Seniors Wyatt Ayers, Steven Grubb, and Mila Brooks traveled to Sitka, Alaska to complete their sr. capstone project for which they developed a game for the Sitka Science Discovery Center to teach young children about the salmon lifecycle. Instructors Piper Wolters and Blake Pedrini accompanied the three students.
The students got the opportunity to speak with many members of the community, gaining different perspectives on the salmon lifecycle and what themes the game they are developing should convey. They presented a live demo of the game to a full room and received great feedback. The students and two instructors even got the opportunity to help with spawning salmon at the hatchery, snorkel in very thick wetsuits, go on a personal tour of a trawler in the Sitka harbor, and so much more.
The sr. capstone project and trip were conceived by Ella Neumann, who is an alumna of CS at Western. Ella is the Data Manager for the Sitka Sound Science Center. Thank you Ella!
Neal Digre graduated from Western in 2016 majoring in computer science and linguistics. Ahead of him lies the opportunity of a lifetime—working with a team of scientists trying to save the world’s rainforests by competing in the finals of the $10 million XPRIZE Rainforest competition this July in Manaus, Brazil. XPRIZE Rainforest is a global five-year competition that convenes innovators and experts across disciplines—from conservationists and Indigenous scientists to engineers and roboticists—and challenges them to use novel technologies to expedite the monitoring of tropical biodiversity. Digre’s team, Limelight Rainforest, is focused on collecting, building, and cataloging a database of the rainforest ecosystem. They take their team name from their signature technology, the Limelight, a remote-sensing platform delivered by drone to the top of the jungle canopy where it spends the night listening in on the Amazon’s insects, birds and tree-dwelling animals. Digre needed to help design and build a computer model that could take the nighttime recordings of jungle sounds and reliably match them to sound files of existing wildlife, especially bugs and birds. Thankfully, Digre’s experience with both languages and machine learning was a perfect match for the task—what are the chirping of crickets or the calls of birds but their own languages? The competition environment was stressful—but fascinating and exhilarating at the same time, Digre says. Digre helped with all facets of the competition, but he became the true focus of the team once Limelight was brought back from its night in the treetops. The team is improving and readying Limelight Rainforest to perform in July's final in the Brazil Rainforest.
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a club focused on preparing students for jobs and internships along with building a supportive community centered around everyone’s success. The biggest ACM event of the year is called the Passion Project, for which students work on a long-term project of their choosing to develop software, a server, or otherwise make use of a technology of their choice. A group comprised of Cooper Morgan, Robert Bates, Ben Huynh, Arne Wiseman, and Konnor Koi, developed the WWU schedule Optimizer, an app that generates all possible non0conflicting schedules based on a student’s course preferences. Try it out at https://cwooper.me/schedule-optimizer/. Sam Bardsley created Control for Reddit, which is a web extension on Chrome and Firefox that blocks feeds and distractions based on user preferences. It was developed to help you take back control of your time from a site with so much potential. Links for the extensions are the following: (Chrome) Control for Reddit - (google.com) (Firefox) Control for Reddit – (mozilla.org). The final presentation was a web server created by Graham Shupe. It is an HTTP web server written entirely in C; Graham chose this as their project to learn network programming ahead of taking CSCI 367! It supports all popular web browsers, and offers functionality for the standard GET and POST requests that are standard for the HTTP protocol.
Cybersecurity students educate Middle Schoolers on data privacy and online security.
Nearly one hundred students from Cedar Heights Middle School in Port Orchard recently learned about online safety and how to keep their personal data secure in a lesson taught by senior cybersecurity majors Ryan Stege and Matthew Goit and computer science senior Joe Hainje as part of Data Privacy Week.
The team taught middle schoolers about their privacy and the types of information that make them personally identifiable online.
Vivian White
Vivian White, a senior in Computer Science, attended the Emerging Researcher's National Conference in Washington DC from March 14-16. She presented her poster on her research with Dr. Kameron Decker Harris and won the 1st place award for undergraduate computer science poster. The project is a study of more interpretable models of learning in neural networks trained for vision tasks. Vivian is also the first undergraduate International Network for Bio-Inspired Computing scholar. This grant supported her collaboration with researchers Guillaume Lajoie, Guy Wolf, and Muawiz Chaudhury (a Western grad!) at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms. It was accepted as a paper at the 2024 International Conference on Learning Representations workshop on Representational Alignment.
WWU Computer Science Run Away with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in Washington in Division 2 at the ICPC PNW Regionals
On Saturday, February 24th, 6 teams from WWU’s Competitive Programming Club made their university proud at the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Pacific Northwest regionals. Of the 6 three-student teams from Western, 3 teams swept 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 7th place in Division 2 in Washington, and got 3rd, 4th and 5th place in Division 2 in the entire Pacific Northwest region.
The Competitive Programming Club in the Department of Computer Science, led by Indie Cowan, fosters a community at Western that provides students with opportunities to build skills in problem solving, job interviewing, and resume building in a fun and welcoming environment. The club also prepares student competitors to represent Western in programming competitions like the ICPC.
The ICPC is a globally recognized annual competition that puts participants’ skills in problem solving and programming to the test. The teams from Western demonstrated their innovation, teamwork, and grit in competition alongside some of the brightest minds in the Pacific Northwest.
The competing teams qualified to represent Western by outperforming their peers at the local Competitive Programming Competition that the club held earlier this quarter. After qualifying, the students had two weeks to prepare for the prestigious competition that lay ahead.
When the weekend arrived, the 18 students and their faculty sponsor Dr. See-Mong Tan traveled to Tacoma on Friday night, where they were treated to a meal at a local restaurant and an overnight hotel stay. The following day kicked off with the teams gathering at University of Washington Tacoma for a quick orientation, followed by the competition: 5 intense hours of problem solving, code writing, and algorithm crafting in which teams put forth their best effort to solve as many of the 13 problems as possible before the clock ran out. Of the six teams, five decided to compete in Division 2, meant for schools just starting to compete in the ICPC, and one brave team decided to compete in Division 1, meant for seasoned problem solvers that had trained for years for this moment.
Tensions were high as the competitors gathered after the contest, where they joined over 100 teams linked remotely from across the Pacific Northwest to watch a play-by-play of the last moments of the competition. The winners were unveiled one by one, revealing a resounding victory for Western.
Out of over 70 teams in the Division 2 regionals, WWU's teams stood out. ‘Lab Rats’, a Western team including Theo Hytopoulos, Avery Le, and Isabel Rodriguez, got 7th place in Washington. ‘Array of Sunshine’, a WWU team consisting of first time competitors Sarah Coffland, Hidemi Mitani Shen, and Diego Llanes, clinched the bronze model locally, and 5th place in the Pacific Northwest regionals. ‘Gitpush, Gatekeep, Girlboss’, a team consisting of Indie Cowan, Autumn Davis, and Sky Duryee, were revealed to be the silver medalists locally, and 4th place in the regionals. And finally, ‘Coding Cowboys’, a team consisting of Sam Johnson, Meghan Lindhorst, and Kaitlynn Carlson, took home the gold medal locally for Western, and 3rd place in the entire Pacific Northwest.
The Western team that competed in Division 1, the Bit Brawlers, consisting of Owen Wright, Joey Capps, and Marvin Chan, managed to take home 41st place in the Pacific Northwest region out of 64 teams. The teams celebrated with dinner in Seattle before returning to Bellingham after a taxing but rewarding day.
The Competitive Programming club is eager to compete in future contests and is always looking for new members who are excited to learn and grow. The club also holds quarterly programming competitions at Western open to all students. If you are a student interested in sharpening your problem solving skills, the club would love to have you, regardless of your experience level.
The club is overjoyed about Western’s growing involvement and growth at the ICPC. It aims to increase Western’s presence in Division 1 over the years, providing students with an outlet to sharpen their skills and prove their excellence.
Congratulations to the winning teams, and thanks to Indie Cowan and the other club officers for their leadership and guidance that brought Western to victory!
Western Washington University Students Triumph in International EduHacks Hackathon
Over the winter break, a team from Western Washington University (WWU) emerged victorious in the EduHacks hackathon, held on January 5th and 6th. The team, composed of Indie Cowan, Autumn Davis, Henry Baker, Yang Zheng, and Owen Wright, demonstrated their skill and creativity in a competition that brought together bright young minds from both China and the United States.
The EduHacks hackathon was held simultaneously at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China and the University of Washington (Seattle) in the U.S. Competitors ranged from students to young professionals. This year's edition focused on applications for social good, emphasizing the use of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, connected vehicles, intelligent sensing, industrial metaverse, and large language models.
Starting at 10:00 am on January 5th, the participating teams had a 26-hour window to develop and submit their projects. Following this, they presented their innovations to local judges, vying for a spot in the final round. Teams were judged on innovation and creativity, technical feasibility, application prospects, and completeness of the work.
The WWU team's entry, a Google Chrome Browser Extension named Organic Translator set them apart from the competition. The tool, powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT, translates highlighted text on web pages into English, in order to understand the meaning of the text in its cultural and textual context. Additionally, it provides insights into the grammar and cultural nuances of the phrase. This product's effectiveness and potential for impact sent the WWU team into the final round, where they faced the top teams from China.
In the final round, the WWU team presented their product in a live stream to over a million viewers worldwide. They went up against the three other finalist teams, and after a long deliberation from the judges, they were awarded a first-place prize of $1400.
The team was formed from members of WWU’s Competitive Programming Club. The club prepares students for industry by connecting them to resources, educating them on how to succeed, introducing them to their peers, and practicing programming problems. If you are a WWU student and you are interested in joining, check out the CPC’s Instagram @wwucpc.
This victory is a feather in the cap for the team members and a proud moment for Western Washington University. The team thanks Western Washington University for its support and members are excited to compete again soon in the upcoming International Collegiate Programming Contest this winter.
Senior CS Students
Students from Western's Computer Science and Cybersecurity programs, located in both Bellingham and at WWU on the Peninsulas, are participating in Senior Projects that support WWU's public aquarium, SEA Discovery Center, in Poulsbo, WA. The projects will build on senior projects from previous years and are focused on enhancing the ability of SEA Discovery Center staff to monitor the conditions of the aquarium exhibits at SEA, which hold 6,000 gallons of saltwater and hundreds of marine animals. The projects will also enhance the aquarium's 25,000+ annual visitors' experience through an interactive kiosk, and underwater camera housed in a floating classroom on Liberty Bay.
Competitive Programming Club
On February 25th, the Western Washington University Competitive Programming Club competed in the International Collegiate Programming Contest regionals at University of Washington Spokane. After practicing for multiple quarters, two teams of three people from WWU entered the Division II section of the competition. Those teams took first and second place in Washington, and one team took fifth place in the whole of the Pacific Northwest region.
The Competitive Programming Club has a mission of helping students gain helpful skills for job-finding while having fun. It’s a fancy name on a resume, but it also provides a stress-free environment to meet people and practice for interviews/programming competitions. Members aren’t required to compete but are informed of upcoming competitions and are surrounded by people who they could team up with. Here is how our most recent competition went down:
The morning of the competition, the team left their hotel and arrived at UW at 9 AM. Everyone was greeted with free breakfast foods and beverages as we got settled in and went over the rules. At 11 AM, the competition began. Each team was given 13 programming problems of varying levels of difficulty. Each would have to try to solve as many problems as they could (and pass runtime limits) within the next five hours. A balloon was delivered to teams for each problem they completed, and midday the teams were treated to Subway! At 4 PM, the competition ended. Throughout the competition, a leaderboard is available, but the leaderboard is frozen an hour before the competition ends to add a bit of secrecy to who will win in the end.
After the timer ran out, we all gathered in a room as the ICPC dramatically revealed the final leaderboard by showing us how many more problems each team solved in the last hour, one by one. After lots of leaderboard excitement, it was revealed that the WWU Binary Bandits, which included Joe Ewert, Owen Wright, and Indie Cowan, got second in Washington and 17th place in the Pacific Northwest. Then it was revealed that the WWU Generative Pre-Trained Transformers, which included Ethan Temple, Joey Capps, and Sky Duryee, got first place in Washington and fifth place in the Pacific Northwest. More than 50 teams competed in Division II in the Pacific Northwest. The team celebrated with a dinner in Seattle.
The Competitive Programming Club is excited to participate in more contests throughout the year and bring home more titles. Congratulations to the competitors for bringing home medals and plaques! Thank you to Robin Preble for leading the club as President this year and to See-Mong Tan for being our faculty advisor.
The Competitive Programming Club is always open to new members and is education centered. If you want a fancy-sounding extracurricular and medals on your resume, as well as the skills to pass a technical interview, come join us in the spring! Open to all students who have completed CSCI 141 or have equivalent experience.
Jamey Albert
CS Senior, Jamey Albert, worked with CS senior Daniel V. Koronthaly, graduate student, Samatha Dobesh, and high school students, Ilaana Khan and Zafir Nasim, to create a mobile application, eXpress, under the supervision of Profs. Shameem Ahmed and Moushumi Sharmin, that aims to aid non-verbal and minimally verbal autistic children and autistic young adults to express their emotion. In Sep 2022, Jamey and Ilaana attended The ACM International joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) where they presented their research on eXpress.
Jamey and Ilaana were the youngest researchers presenting their research in UbiComp, which is a premier interdisciplinary venue where leading researchers, designers, developers, and practitioners present innovative results in all aspects of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Their research received much attention due to its potential impact to improve the experience of non-verbal autistic individuals and their families. Jamey Albert was the recipient of the College of Science and Engineering’s (CSE) Jarvis Memorial Summer Research Stipend 2022, which partially funded her research on eXpress. Jamey is a student researcher in the NEAT Research Lab, which focuses on creating affective technology for addressing behavioral, mental, and cognitive health problems, especially autism and other neurodivergent conditions.
Griffin Hartz
Griffin Hartz, a junior in Computer Science, was awarded the Elwha Summer Research Award.
Griffin will be working with Dr. Wesley Deneke to study methods to make the coming Metaverse more accessible and facilitate collaboration. Virtual Reality support and automated controls will be added to a 3D virtual world in the effort to enhance immersion and minimize the skill barrier.
Catilin Bannister
Caitlin Bannister, working towards a BS in Behavioral Neuroscience, was awarded a Goldwater Scholarship for her research applying computer vision techniques to the study of Huntington’s disease. Caitlin is working with Kameron Decker Harris (Computer Science), Jeff Carroll, and Jeff Cantle (both Behavioral Neuroscience) and using deep learning to track naturally behaving mice. Huntington’s often first manifests as motor deficits that may be measured with this analysis. The Goldwater scholarship will support Caitlin’s research until graduation, after which she plans to study for a PhD in neuroscience and the treatment of nervous system dysfunction.
Dept. Developments
More than 100 alumni, friends, and students attend KB Gala
More than 100 alumni, friends, and students attended the KB Gala on 5 April in KB. Dozens of alumni going back to the 1980s, as well as faculty emeritus also going back to that time, were present. The gala included a poster session, a live music performance by students, tours of the building including the robotics lab, and a few brief talks including by Neal Digre (CS alumni 2016) who was a member of the XPRIZE winning team who gave the keynote.
Past Dept. Developments
Western Washington University (WWU) celebrated a major milestone with the completion of Kaiser Borsari Hall, a testament to WWU's commitment to sustainable innovation and transformative education. This cutting-edge facility will not only expand capacity in WWU’s growing electrical and computer engineering, energy science, and computer science programs but also set a precedent as the first publicly funded zero-energy academic building on a university campus in Washington State.
The new EECE and CS building is on schedule - classes start in KB in winter 2025. The skybridge on the 4th floor and the main doors of KB remain closed. We will let you know when the building is ready for our use.
In late spring quarter Computer Science racked a new server for the department's HTC cluster. For the first time we have introduced the NVIDIA H100 GPU to our portfolio of resources available. With the purchase of these three GPUs we have advanced the research capabilities of CS students and faculty, bringing industry standard hardware for LLM and AI development and research to our campus. This acquisition pushes the department's mission to provide industry-standard resources, expanding the toolsets we prepare our students with as they transition to the workforce.
The technical specs for each H100 GPU include 14,592 CUDA Cores, 456 Tensor Cores, 80GB Memory HBM2e, at 1065 MHz Base and up to 1755 MHz Boost over a PCIe 5.0 x16 bus. Performance includes 25.6 TFLOPS for Double Precisions, 756 FLOPS for BFLOAT16 Tensor Core, 1513 TFLOPS for FP16 Tensor Core, and 3026 TFLOPS for each of FP8 Tensor Core and INT8 Tensor Core.
Western Washington University has announced a new Computer Science Bachelor of Arts in Education (BAE) major which focuses on preparing students to become computer science teachers in middle schools and high schools.
WWU has received recognition from the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense. With this designation, WWU joins about 300 schools nationally to receive this recognition. In addition to advantages for WWU students applying for scholarships and careers can include the designation on their resume. The award makes WWU eligible for Cybersecurity research programs sponsored by the NSA, DHS, and National Science Foundation.
In order to achieve recognition as a CAE-CD, Western had to go through a rigorous certification effort. The effort included demonstrating that the program covered topics in 17 areas of cyber security, that the program had an assessment system in place, and that students were given opportunities for enrichment in Cybersecurity outside of the classroom. In addition to the program itself, WWU had to demonstrate on-going research efforts in cybersecurity, outreach to the community, active involvement in the national cybersecurity education community, and that WWU itself was taking active steps to ensure its own cybersecurity.
The effort to obtain the CAE certification took an extended length of time. Initially it was delayed as the program guidelines were being revised by a committee appointed by the NSA. WWU was a participant in the committee. The process was then further delayed by the pandemic. Fortunately, those issues were eventually resolved. With the designation in place, the WWU Cybersecurity program will continue to attract new students from our partner colleges as the most technically rigorous program in the state, with a high demand for our graduates. WWU will also be seeking new opportunities for research in the area of cybersecurity and new opportunities for cooperation with the community.