Thomas Effland wins Grand Finals in the Association for Computing Machinery Student Research Competition for his paper, Focused Retrieval of University Course Descriptions from Highly Variable Sources.
The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), sponsored by Microsoft Research, offers a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research at well-known ACM sponsored and co-sponsored conferences before a panel of judges and attendees.
Effland, a graduating mathematics major, advanced to the grand finals after taking first place this March for his presentation at the 2015 SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) Student Research Conference. Winners from each student conference submit a paper on their work to be judged in the grand finals.
Grand Finalist and their advisors are invited to the ACM Awards Banquet in San Francisco next month, where they are recognized for their accomplishments, along with other prestigious ACM award winners. This includes the winner of the Turing Award (also known as the "Nobel Prize of Computing").
Effland is also this year's recipient of the Dean's Outstanding Senior Award in mathematics. After graduating he will pursue a Ph.D. degree in computer science at Columbia University. [May 2015]