Computer Science | Grinnell College

Thursday Extras is a series of occasional talks organized and sponsored by the Department of Computer Science.

If you're interested in presenting a Thursday Extra, talk with Jerod Weinman (Noyce 3825) to arrange scheduling. We also maintain a tentative and open schedule for future talks in the series.

We invite everyone in the Grinnell College community to attend these talks!

2018-2019 series

• February 21: Samuel Rebelsky, Developing soft and technical skills through multi-semester, remotely-mentored community-service projects
• February 14: Glimmer Labs students, Code Camps
• February 8: Alumni Talk, Careers in CS
• November 15: Anya Vostinar and Charlie Curtsinger, Graduate School in Computer Science
• October 18: Myra B. Cohen, Iowa State University, Moving Software Testing Outside of the Box - An Expedition Beyond its Walls
• October 11: Mattori Birnbaum 2019, Linh Bui 2020, Zoe Grubbs 2019, Hadley Luker 2019, and Xinya Yang 2020, Finding Performance Problems with ALEX
• October 8: Cassie Koomjian 2005, Alex Leach 2006, Ian Young 2008, and Terian Koscik 2012, Careers in Computer Science
• October 4: Lisong Xu (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), Internet Bandwidth Allocation
• September 27: Antonio Bianchi (University of Iowa), Detecting Vulnerable Code: From Mobile Apps to IoT Devices
• September 13: Jerod Weinman, Off-Campus Study for Computer Science Majors: Why, How, and Where?
• September 6: John Stone, Adversarial Examples; or, When Is a School Bus an Ostrich?

2017-2018 series

• April 5: Pouya Mahdi Gholami and Garret Wang, Scrambler
• March 8: Myles Becker, Liat Berkowitz, Addison Gould, Hadley Luker, Eli Most, Dhruv Phumbra, Jonathan Sadun, Zachary Susag, Proofs, Programs and Synthesis
• February 22: CS SEPC, Résumé Building and Interview Preparation Extravaganza
• February 14: Cassie Koomjian '05, Alex Leach '06, Ian Young '08, and Terian Koscik '12 (CSC 222 mentors); and Megan Goering '08 of Human Centered Design and her partner Joe Mellin of Microsoft, Life and Career After Grinnell (Lessons from Alumni)
• February 8: Samuel A. Rebelsky, Grinnell College, A Functional Approach to Data Science in Introductory CS Course
• February 1: Caelin Bryant, Jonathan Gilmour, Bea Herce-Hagiwara, Anh Thu Pham, Halle Remash, Marli Remash, and Jonah Zimmerman, Diversifying the CS Pipeline through Innovative Code Camps
• January 25: Computer Science faculty, Summer Research in CS at Grinnell
• December 7: Samuel A. Rebelsky, Grinnell College, Summer Opportunities in CS
• November 30: Charles Ofria, Michigan State University, Using Computational Evolution to Understand the Origins of Biological Complexity
• November 2: Eric Van Wyk, University of Minnesota, Build your own programming language, and other reasons to go to graduate school
• October 12: Cesare Tinelli, University of Iowa, Improving the reliability and security of software with formal methods and automated reasoning
• October 10: Wes Beary '05, Cassie Koomjian '05, Terian Koscik '12, Alex Leach '06, and Ian Young '08, Chat with CS Alumni Mentors for CSC 321
• October 5: Professors Anya Vostinar, Charlie Curtsinger, Peter Michael Osera, and Titus Klinge, Graduate School in Computer Science
• September 21: Professor Jerod Weinman and staff from the Off-Campus Study office, Off-Campus Study for CS Majors: Why, how, and where?
• September 14: Jong Hoon Bae 2018, Theo Kalfas 2018, Nick Roberson 2018, and Otabek Nazarov 2018, Cauldron: An IDE for modular development of chemical reaction networks
• August 31: Julie Foster, Center for Careers, Life, and Service Non-Compete and Non-Disclosure Agreements: What Students Need to Know Before Signing Employment Agreements

2016-2017 series

• May 11: Students from Analysis of Algoriths course, Exploring Algorithms with Design and Analysis Techniques
• May 4: Professors and students in Computer Science and guest speakers, Inclusion in CS
• April 27, Student research projects: Project Gadfly: Students and Alums Coding for Social Good
• April 20: Computer Science SEPC, Résumé review session
• April 13: Ursula Wolz, Noyce Visiting Professor at Grinnell College, Computer Science Outreach in Grinnell and Central Iowa
• March 2, Student research projects: The Rebelsky group will be discussing the design of its code camp for middle schoolers and lessons learned. The Osera group will be discussing issues of proof and/or program generation.
• February 23: John Stone, Manager of the Mathematics Local-Area Network, MathLAN Past, Present, and Future
• February 16: Representatives from The University of Iowa, Discussion of the new joint 4-1 BA-MCS program
• February 9: Gary Meyer, Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Image Based Rendering and its Impact on Studio Photography
• January 26: Professors in Computer Science, Summer Research Opportunities in Computer Science at Grinnell
• November 17: Sooji Son, 2018, Medha Gopalaswamy 2018 and Jianting Chen 2018, ORC²A Proof Assistant; Reilly Grant 2018 and Zachary Segall 2018, Semi-Automated Program Synthesis
• November 10: Professors in Computer Science Summer opportunities in computer science
• November 3: Xiaoqiu Huang, Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University, Developing and using bioinformatics tools for analysis of big DNA sequence data
• October 25: Ursula Wolz, Noyce Visiting Professor at Grinnell College, Technologies for Online Instruction: Do They Support Authentic Learning?
• October 13: Kyle Rector, Department of Computer Science at The University of Iowa, Accessible Computing for All
• October 6: Professor Samuel Rebelsky and students who have studied abroad, Study abroad for CS majors
• September 22: Professor Titus Klinge, Preventing Memory Corruption in Chemical Computations
• September 20: Sara Marku 2018, Ruth Wu 2017, and Professor Henry Walker Student-faculty Collaboration in Developing and Testing Infrastructure for a C-based Course using Robots
• September 15: Toby Baratta 2017, Alex Mitchell 2017, Ying Long 2017, Larry Boateng Asante 2017, Sooji Son 2018, and Maddie Kirwin 2019 Summer Internship and Research Experience in Computer Science
• September 8: Professor Peter-Michael Osera, Programming Assistance for Type-Directed Programming
• September 1: Professors Charlie Curtsinger, Peter-Michael Osera, and Titus Klinge, Graduate School in Computer Science: What it's like, what it's for, and how to apply

2015-2016 series

• May 5: Catie Baker from the University of Washington, Increasing access to STEM for blind students
• February 11: Ian Young 2008, Cassie Koomjian 2005, Jonathan Koomjian 2003, and Wes Beary 2005, Alumni career discussion
• January 28: Professors in Computer Science, Summer Research Opportunities in Computer Science at Grinnell
• December 10: Professors in Computer Science, Summer opportunities in computer science
• December 3: Giang Nguyen 2017, Bioinformatics Research Internship at Michigan State University
• November 19: Computer Science SEPC, Résumé review session
• November 12: Octav Chipara, Department of Computer Science at The University of Iowa, Developing and Deploying Mobile Sensing Applications
• November 5: Professor Henry Walker, MyroC 3.0: Update, Portability, Non-blocking, Threads, Processes, Coordination
• October 29: David Fernández-Baca, Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University, Algorithms for Assembling the Tree of Life
• October 8: Blake Creasey 2016, IBM Watson & Innovation in New York City
• October 1: Professors Peter-Michael Osera and Charlie Curtsinger, Graduate programs in computer science
• September 24: Professor Samuel Rebelsky, Scripting GIMP with Racket
• September 23: Ursula Wolz, Noyce Visiting Professor at Grinnell College, Does Learning Computer Science Require a Teacher? Reflections on Automated Tutors and Learning Communities
• September 10: Reilly Noonan Grant 2018, Alex French 2017, Bazil Mupisiri 2018, and Logan Goldberg 2018, GNU/Linux System Administration Projects

2014-2015 series

• April 27: Brooks Davis, Senior Software Engineer at SRI International, Beyond the PDP-11: Architectural support for a memory-safe C abstract machine
• April 17: Nora Bresette Buccino, Enhancing Myro Java using Android
• December 4: Professors in Computer Science, Summer opportunities in computer science
• November 20: Toby Baratta 2017, Bo Wang 2016, and Kitt Nika 2016, Historical map processing: text detectors, database linking, and region models
• November 13: Gianfranco Ciardo, Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University, Beyond BDDs: advanced decision diagrams and their applications
• November 6: Professor Janet Davis and Richard Bright, Director of Off-Campus Study, Options for combining off-campus study with study of computer science
• October 20: Professor Sriram Pemmarju, Department of Computer Science at The University of Iowa, Toss a coin, throw a ball,and solve a problem
• October 16: Professors Jerod Weinman and Janet Davis, Graduate school in computer science: what? why? how? when? who?
• October 2: Wes Beary 2005, Alex Leach 2006, Cassie Schmitz 2005, and Ian Young 2008: Careers on Rails: Grinnell CS alumni in Web development and infrastructure.
• September 25: Eileen Fordham 2017, Halley Freger 2017, Amanda Hinchman-Dominguez 2017, Alex Mitchell 2017, Victoria Tsou 2016, and Zoe Wolter 2016: MIST, the Mathematical Image-Synthesis Toolkit.
• September 18: CS SEPC: Resume workshop.
• September 11: Ajuna Kyaruzi 2017: Sudo open sesame: my summer as an assistant GNU/Linux system administrator.

2013-2014 series

• April 10: Nediyana Daskalova 2014, Nathalie Ford 2015, Ann Hu 2014, Kyle Moorehead 2015, and Ben Wagnon 2014: Designing technology to help Grinnellians sleep more.
• February 27: Planning with Grinnell's new CS curriculum and major.
• February 20: Computer Science SEPC: Preparing for the technical interview.
• February 13: John Stone: Left-leaning red-black trees.
• February 5: Maijid Moujaled 2014, Colin Tremblay 2014, Lea Marold Sonnenschein 2015, and Patrick Triest 2015: Grinnell AppDev.
• January 30: Spencer Liberto 2015, Lea Marolt Sonnenschein 2015, and Daniel Torres 2015: Mobile computing for social good.
• January 23: Professors Sam Rebelsky and Jerod Weinman, with John Stone: Summer 2014 research projects.
• December 12: Marsha Fletcher 2015, Alexandra Greenberg 2016, Mark Lewis 2016, Evan Manuella 2016, and Christine Tran 2016: Multiple models of media scripting.
• December 5: Professor Sam Rebelsky: Summer opportunities in computer science.
• November 20: Professor Aaron Stump (University of Iowa): Writing bug-free code using theorem provers.
• November 7: Chike Abuah 2014, Aaltan Ahmad 2014, Nediyana Daskalova 2014, Erik Opavsky 2014, Kim Spasaro 2014, Daniel Torres 2015, and Brennan Wallace 2016: Summer experiences in computer science.
• October 17: Max Mindock 2015: Weather radar systems.
• October 10: Professor Jerod Weinman, Graduate school in computer science: what? why? how? when? who?
• October 3: Adam Arsenault 2016, Jordan Yuan 2015, and Shaun Mataire 2016, MathLAN system administration.
• September 26: Jennelle Nystrom 2014, My Microsoft internship.
• September 19: Kim Spasaro 2014, Computational linguistics: crawling the Web for non-English data.

2012-2013 series

• April 25: Professor Rhys Price Jones, wot they shoulda bin dun learned me in SKule.
• April 18: Brooks Davis, Building a platform for modern systems research.
• April 11: Professor Henry Walker, Grinnell's competitive advantages in computer science.
• April 4: Aditi Roy 2013, What is a good recommendation system?
• February 28: Professors Sam Rebelsky, Janet Davis, and Jerod Weinman, Building knowledge and confidence with mediascripting.
• February 7: Martin Estrada 2014 and June Yolcuepa 2015, untitled talk.
• January 31: Professors Janet Davis and Sam Rebelsky, Summer 2013 research projects.
• January 24: Hart Russell 2014 and Prashanna Tiwaree 2014, Re-architecturing MediaScheme
• December 6: Professor Sam Rebelsky, Summer opportunities in computer science.
• November 29: Tolu Alabi 2013, NoSQL.
• November 15: Sarah Henney 2013 and Marsha Fletcher 2015, Self-disclosing GIMP with MediaScript.
• October 18: Dilan Ustek 2014, Aditi Roy 2013, Tolu Alabi 2013, Maijid Moujaled 2014, and David Cowden 2013, Technical internships.
• October 11: Professor Alberto Maria Segre (University of Iowa), Computational epidemiology.
• October 4: Jennelle Nystrom 2014 and Svea Drentlaw 2013, GLEAM: the Grinnell Livescripting Environment for Art and Music.
• September 27: Professors Jerod Weinman and Rhys Price Jones, Graduate school in computer science: what? why? how? when? who?

2011-2012 series

• May 3: Isaiah Sarju 2013, Dynamic code generation and what it takes to get there.
• April 26: Pelle Hall 2014, Andrew Hirakawa 2012, and Jennelle Nystrom 2014, Self-disclosing code.
• April 19: Tolu Alabi 2013, Brad Gordon 2012, and Russel Steinbach 2012, K-selection on the GPU.
• April 12: Chike Abuah 2014, Rogelio Calderon 2014, and Sydney Ryan 2014, The MediaPython project.
• February 27: April O'Neill 2013, Erik Opavsky 2014, Dilan Ustek 2014, and Professor Henry Walker, A C-based introductory course using robots.
• February 23: Radka Slamova 2013, Chase Felker 2012, and Professor Janet Davis, Integrating UX with Scrum to create a usable Local Foods Co-op Website.
• February 16: Martin Dluhos 2012, Free software and open source software.
• February 9: Kate Ingersoll 2013 and Kimberly Spasaro 2014, Media scripting with Inkscape.
• February 2: John Stone, Software development using R⁶RS Scheme.
• January 26: Summer research opportunities in computer science.
• December 8: Résumé workshop.
• December 1: Professor Paul Tymann (Rochester Institute of Technology), Steganography.
• November 17: Jillian Goetz 2010, Transitioning to an interdisciplinary graduate program.
• November 10: Summer opportunities in CS.
• October 27: Rethinking mathematics in CS at Grinnell: potential new requirements and a new discrete structures course.
• October 13: Brady Garvin (University of Nebraska at Lincoln), Configuration-dependent faults and feature locality.
• October 6: Zach Butler 2013 and Dugan Knoll 2012, A robust system for discovering text baselines in scene text images.
• September 29: Max Kaufmann 2012, Automatically generating parallel corpora.
• September 22: Professors Janet Davis and Jerod Weinman, Graduate school in computer science: what? why? how? when? who?
• September 15: David Cowden 2013, April O'Neill 2013, Erik Opavsky 2014, and Dilan Ustek 2014, A C-based introductory course using robots.
• September 8: Terian Koscik 2012, An on-line community for peer-supported learning of computer science.
• September 1: Professor Juan Pablo Hourcade (University of Iowa), HCI4Peace.

2010-2011 series

• April 14: Scott Kaits 2011, Facebook support groups: towards understanding member usage.
• April 7: Ravi Chande 2011 and Dylan Gumm 2011, Text recognition on historical maps.
• March 3: Forrest Friesen 2011, Computation in pure hardware with FPGAs.
• February 24: Professor Henry Walker, Programming robots: a status report.
• February 17: Aaron Todd 2011, Multi-agent-simulation in Scala.
• February 10: Professor Jerod Weinman, Robust text recognition.
• February 3: Professors Sam Rebelsky, Jerod Weinman, and Henry Walker, Summer research opportunities in computer science.
• December 9: Jeff Leep 2011, Alexander Rich-Shea 2012, Andrew Hirakawa 2012, Emircan Uysaler 2013, Dugan Knoll 2012, Jing Tao Liu 2011, Terian Koscik 2012, and Charles Frantz 2011, GCal: a community calendar for the rest of us.
• December 2: Jordan Shkolnick 2011, Testing at Microsoft.
• November 11: Andrew Hirakawa 2012 and Russel Steinbach 2012, Placing incoming students in classes.
• November 4: Jeff Leep 2011, Managing the MathLAN.
• October 28: Martin Dluhos 2012, Squeezing the MathLAN.
• October 7: Shitanshu Aggarwal 2011, Delivering groceries in Seattle.
• September 30: Professor Henry Walker, The SIGCSE submission and review system: 10 (hexadecimal) lessons.
• September 16: Professor Janet Davis, Exploring persuasive technology through participatory design.

2009-2010 series

• May 13: Tony Pan 2010, An introduction to the Google Maps API.
• April 30: Professor Myra Cohen (University of Nebraska - Lincoln), Combinatorics, heuristic search, and software testing: Theory meets practice.
• April 22: Jordan Shkolnick 2011, Nora Coon 2010, Jillian Goetz 2010, and Cyrus Witthaus 2010, Interactive MediaScripting.
• April 9: Professor Dan Garcia (University of California - Berkeley), 274 students can't be wrong!: GamesCrafters, a computational game theory undergraduate research and development group at UC Berkeley.
• April 8: Professor Dan Garcia (University of California - Berkeley), Keeping the Millennials engaged with active learning.
• April 6: Professor Kate Deibel (University of Washington), A real grand challenge: Designing technologies for college students with disabilities.
• March 18: John Stone and Professor Henry Walker, Web content management with Drupal.
• March 4: Nathan Levin 2010, Andy Applebaum 2010, Alex Cohn 2011, and Jeffrey Thompson 2010, StatsGames.
• February 25: Tony Pan 2010, Summer internship at Microsoft Corporation.
• February 11: Professor Steve Cunningham (California State University - Stanislaus), 3D computer graphics and universal supercomputers.
• January 28: Professor Sam Rebelsky and other department faculty members, Summer research opportunities in computer science.
• December 3: Charles Frantz 2011 and Jeff Leep 2011, Combining hierarchy and feature sharing for object categorization.
• November 19: Professor Christopher K. Tuggle (Iowa State University), Computational problems in biology.
• November 5: Professor Jun Ni (University of Iowa), Spectrum of high-performance medical imaging informatics.
• October 29: Shitanshu Aggarwal 2011 and Jay Lidaka 2010, Parallel training: speeding up machine learning using graphical processing units.
• October 9: Dr. Harold Trease (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Video analytics for indexing, summarization and searching streaming video and video archives.
• October 8: Alex Exarhos 2010, Interfaces for video analytics.
• October 2: Professor David G. Kay (University of California, Irvine), Why so many?: A historical view of the early development of programming languages.
• September 17: Dennis Vaccaro 2011, Graphical user interface development using the Qt toolkit.
• September 10: Professor Jerod Weinman, Efficient machine learning for computer vision-based depth perception.

2008-2009 series

• April 30: Ian Bone 2009 and Tony Leguia 2009, Data compression.
• April 24: Michael Neff (University of California, Davis), Designing computational representations of expressive movement.
• April 16: Tim Miller 2009 and Pat Rich 2010, ADAPT: Audience Design of Ambient Persuasive Technology.
• April 9: Brooks Davis (The Aerospace Corporation), Reflections on building a high-performance computing cluster using FreeBSD.
• April 2: Alexi Brooks 2010, Problem solving techniques.
• February 12: John Stone, Keeping stuff: how to preserve course papers despite technological change.
• February 5: Professor Sam Rebelsky, Media scripting.
• January 29: Professor Sam Rebelsky, Professor Jerod Weinman, and John Stone, Summer research opportunities in computer science.
• January 22: Ian Th Atha 2009 and Ian Bone 2009, Getting a job: big companies, small companies.
• December 4: Dave Herman 2000, Adventures in ECMAScript and Reasoning about hygienic macros.
• November 20: Ted Cooper 2009 and Alexi Brooks 2010, Sketch-based Bargello: alternative computer-aided design.
• November 13: Professor Henry Walker, Placing incoming students in CS/Math/Statistics: from version 1.3 toward version 2.0.
• November 6: Ian Bone 2009, JavaScript in the real world.
• October 30: Emily Jacobson 2009, SOUSA: the Sketch-Based Online User Study Application.
• October 9: Professors Janet Davis and Jerod Weinman, Applying to graduate school in computer science.
• October 2: Professor Henry Walker, Games in the computer science classroom: good or evil?
• September 18: Kathy Iberle (Hewlett-Packard Development Company), Is there life after school?
• September 11: Theocharis "Ian" Athanasakis 2009, Data-intensive scalable computing.
• September 4: John Stone, Liberty through license: the GPLv3 and other free-software licenses.

2007-2008 series

• May 1: Elijah Buck 2008, The FreeBSD sysctl system: getting and setting kernel parameters.
• April 24: Professor Janet Davis, Engaging and informing citizens with Household Indicators.
• April 17: Elijah Buck 2008, The User Consultant Data Base: challenges of long-term development and maintenance.
• April 3: Cassie Schmitz 2005, Developing software for e-government.
• March 6: John Stone, The .doc is out: The Open Document Format and its prospects.
• February 28: C. M. Lubinski 2008, Spiffy debugging with gdb.
• February 21: Theocharis "Ian" Athanasakis 2009, Summer at Google: automating a gargantuous data flow.
• February 14: Cable Thompson 2008, Developing a robotic assistant for people with impaired mobility.
• February 7: Professors Marge Coahran, Janet Davis, and Sam Rebelsky, Summer research opportunities in computer science.
• January 24: Professor Marge Coahran, Computer-assisted Bargello quilt design.
• November 15: Soren Berg 2008 and David D'Angelo 2007, Scheme scripting in Inkscape.
• November 8: Tony Pan 2010 and Heather Whisenhunt 2008, Phoenix: a scriptable non-linear functional video editor.
• November 1: Cassie Sims 2008, Interactive visualization of protein dynamics.
• October 18: Ian Young 2008, Regular expressions and automata: speeding up vim.
• October 11: Ted Cooper 2009 and Emily Jacobson 2009, Efficient pixel-manipulation in the GIMP.
• October 4: Lorelei Kelly 2008, Max Kuipers 2009, and Tim Miller 2009, DrFu: A crutch for the GIMP.
• September 20: Tony Leguia 2009, Sorting out children by sorting out digraphs: topological sorting of digraphs with outdegree four.
• September 13: Professors Sam Rebelsky and Janet Davis, DrFu: Media computing in CS1.
• September 6: John Stone, Large numbers. Really large.

2006-2007 series

• May 10: Leonya Ivanov, Metamorphosis: programming the College's Web presence.
• April 26: Brooks Davis (The Aerospace Corporation), Open source development methods.
• February 22: Christine Wang 2008 and Jonathan Tsu 2008, Development of an online campus map.
• February 8: Monica Ugwi 2008 and Eric Omwega 2008, Automation of the athletic recruiting process.
• February 1: Professors Sam Rebelsky and Janet Davis, Summer research programs in computer science.
• January 25: John Stone, Xlife is beautiful.
• December 7: Michael Lewis 2008 and Cable Thompson 2008, An investigation of the applicability of the functional programming paradigm to 3D graphics.
• November 30: Rachel Heck 2001, Interactive character animation: synthesizing in realtime with minimal effort.
• November 16: Luis Zuleta-Benavides 2007 and Ian Lunderskov 2008, Functional video scripting.
• November 9: Tony Leguia 2009, Saugar Sainju 2008, and Ian Bone-Rundle 2009, Functional multimedia: applying the functional paradigm to images.
• October 31: Elizabeth Norton 2009 and Arunabh Singh 2009, Statistics can be fun.
• October 12: Angeline Namai 2007 and Eryn O'Neil 2007, Women in computer science at Grinnell.
• October 3: C. M. Lubinski 2008, Win 2 Lin: making the transition and making it effective.
• September 19: Mark Nettling 2007, Programming in the small business world.
• September 12: Kabenla Armah 2004, Yaw Nti-Addae 2004, and Leonya Ivanov, On the (possible) significance of the statistically insignificant.
• September 5: Furthering Grinnell's computer science community: a dialog for students and faculty.
• August 29: John Stone, Keeping up with the blogs: using RSS and Atom feed readers to monitor dynamic Web sites.