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News & Events

Become a Teaching Assistant or Tutor- Fall 2016

imagesThe Computer Science Department is now accepting applications for teaching assistants and tutors for the Fall semester. We are interested in finding TAs for classes ranging from our introductory classes to our upper-level core classes and electives. You may be a TA for any class you have completed (or CS 134), and we encourage even those early in the major or who have taken only one or two CS courses to apply. Being a TA is a great opportunity to teach other students and to work closely with faculty as part of your life at Williams, and it can be a very rewarding experience. You are all encouraged to apply!

 

Please apply by April 15 by filling out the online form available. Contact Lauren (ltv2@williams.edu) with any questions.

Interested in CS Research or a CS Thesis? *Application is due April 11th*

Fall Research/Thesis

If you would like to register for our fall 2016 independent research course, either to pursue a single-semester project or to begin research potentially leading to a thesis in the spring, please download and complete our fall research form.

You must discuss possible projects with any faculty member you may like to work with in person. Please submit your completed form to Lauren Vining, CS Administrative Assistant by April 11, 2016.

ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games featured Williams student, alumni, and faculty

Conference

From left to right: Jamie Lesser ’17, Prof. McGuire, Mike Mara ’12, Dan Evangelakos ’15

Jamie Lesser ’17 was the posters chair on the organizing committee and did a great job both behind the scenes while running review and at the podium during the conference. She was one of two undergraduates in attendance at the 100+ person conference, and the only undergrad I’ve ever heard of on a conference committee.
Prof McGuire presented one of our group’s new papers, a Phenomenological Scattering Model for Order-Independent Transparency, which makes effects such as glass and smoke both realistic and efficient to render in virtual reality.
Mike Mara ’12 presented CloudLight: A System for Amortizing Indirect Lighting in Real-Time Rendering, a distributed computing paper that applies his undergraduate thesis work to virtual reality rendering. It contains impressive results measured on continent-wide networks with custom server hardware and up to 50 simultaneous clients. His talk’s audience-participation elements were very well received.
Dan Evangelakos ’15 presented a poster on his TimeWarp++ algorithm, which conceals the latency inherent in a head-tracking sensor and virtual reality head-mounted display by warping rendered images with parallax. His oral presentation also received quite a few compliments.

Virtual Undergraduate Town Hall Event

Designing Healthcare Robots for Children with Special Needs

Speaker: Ayanna Howard, Georgia Tech
Host: Gail Murphy, University of British Columbia

  • Meet leading computer science & engineering researchers
  • Learn about their innovative work
  • Receive mentoring
  • Have your questions answered

Student Thesis Titles!

Samuel Donow: “A Real-Time Solution to Global Illumination using Light Fields”

Devin Gardella: “Improving Anonymity and Response Time in Facet: A Censorship Circumvention System”

Matthew McNaughton: “Predictive Autoscaling of Pods in the Kubernetes Container Cluster Manager”

Reid Pryzant: “Automating Metagenome Structural Feature Prediction”

Diwas Timilsina: “Green Processor Design Using FPGA-Based Cores”

Kai Wang: “Composing Bach-Style Chorale with Convolutional LSTM over Tonnetz Space”

Lauren Yu: “Applying Machine Learning to Viola Music to Predict Expressive Bow Articulation Descriptions”

 

Matthew McNaughton ’16 Awarded Grosvenor Cup

Williams College has awarded its annual Grosvenor Cup Award to Matt McNaughton ’16.

The Grosvenor Cup is given by members of the Interfraternity Council of 1931 in memory of their fellow member, Allan Livingston Grosvenor. It is awarded annually to a student who has best demonstrated concern for the college community and beyond through extensive dedicated service and who has served with the utmost integrity and reliability. The committee of award consists of the chairman and the secretary of the College Council and three other members selected by the Council.

At the end of each academic year, the outgoing College Council requests nominations for the award from the rising senior class. Based on these nominations, McNaughton was selected as this year’s recipient; the award was announced at this year’s fall Convocation. A computer science and political science major from State College, Pa., McNaughton was noted in many of the nominations he received for his kindness and desire to help the campus and larger community. During his time at Williams, McNaughton has served on College Council as an officer and representative, as a junior advisor, a teaching assistant, and on the Mental Health Committee. Off campus, he has served in the wider community by coaching basketball, working with local schools, and designing a computer science education program directed toward high school girls.