Article written by Dr. Deborah Knox
Computer Science junior Joie Murphy (Class of 2017) has been awarded a prestigious research fellowship for an 11-week summer program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Through a national and highly competitive application process, Joie was selected to participate in the NIST Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program. The SURF program is sponsored by NIST and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
During her fellowship during Summer 2016, Joie will be working in the area of user interface design under the guidance of Dr. Spencer Breiner and Dr. Eswaran Subrahmanian. Joie’s project, User Interface Design for Terminology Generation, will focus on the design and implementation of both curator and end-user interfaces for a domain specific system that employs rule- and root-based generation of terminology. Dr. Breiner is a member of the Software and Systems Division, Cyber-infrastructure research group, serving in a post-doctoral position. Dr. Subrahmanian is a Fellow of the American Association of Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is also a member of the Cyber-infrastructure research group.
Joie shares her thoughts about the SURF opportunity: “I am really looking forward to being a part of the NIST SURF Program for this upcoming summer. I was interested in applying to NIST because of the hands on nature of the work and the great number of applications of computer science to topics that they offer projects in. I believe that this program will allow me to improve my abilities as a computer science student and as a researcher by allowing me to be amongst likeminded peers. I plan to continue on to graduate school so I am hopeful that this will be a rewarding experience with the potential to shape my future research interests.”
Joie will be working in the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) at NIST. The fellowship program is designed to provide hands-on research experiences in a number of areas, including computer security, information access, software testing, networking, and communications technologies. ITL has the broad mission to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology through research and development in information technology, mathematics, and statistics.
Congratulations to Joie for being awarded a NIST SURF fellowship! We look forward to hearing more about her summer experiences and her first-hand knowledge after working in a government lab.
