CRA Announces Winners of 1996-1997 Outstanding Undergraduate Awards

The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the results of the 1996-1997 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Awards competition, sponsored this year by Microsoft.

The awards are presented in two categories: the Outstanding Female Undergraduate award went to Ekaterina Dolginova from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Outstanding Male Undergraduate award went to Andrew Ng from Carnegie Mellon University. The Selection Committee also chose Howard Cheng from the University of Alberta as a runner up. Honorable Mention was given to the following:

Aaron B. Brown, Harvard University, Computer Science
Jonathan E. Graehl, University of Southern California, Computer Science
Kelly A. Shaw, Duke University, Computer Science and Economics
Marianne L. Shaw, University of Pennsylvania, Computer Science Engineering and Electrical Engineering
Neil T. Spring, University of California, San Diego, Computer Science and Engineering

Candidates, nominated by their departments, had to be majoring in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or an equivalent program. The Selection Committee consisted of Daniel Huttenlocher of Cornell University (chair), Jeff Ullman of Stanford University, and Jill Mesirov of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research.

About the Winners

Ekaterina Dolginova is in her senior year at MIT, majoring in Computer Science and Engineering. She was nominated for novel research done with Professor Nancy Lynch on modeling and verification of hybrid (continuous/discrete) systems. Her work produced mathematical models and proofs of safety (or absence of safety) for certain maneuvers arising in automated highway systems; it has been presented already at two top-quality conferences. Ekaterina, in just this last year, has won the MIT Optimized Compiler Contest, the Harold Levy Memorial Scholarship, and the MIT Antichess Game Design Contest. She carries a 5.0 grade point average (on a 5.0 scale). She is fluent in English, Russian, and Hebrew and proficient in French. Her interests include reading, cross-country and downhill skiing, and Ping Pong.

Andrew Ng graduated this spring from CMU with a triple major in Mathematics/Computer Science, Economics, and Statistics; he is now pursuing his Ph.D. at MIT. As an undergraduate, he was involved in machine learning research both at CMU and at AT&T Bell Laboratories. His work at AT&T led to his senior thesis, entitled "Preventing Over-Fitting of Cross-Validation Data in Hypothesis Selection." He has authored or co-authored six papers to date. Andrew also led a project to create ML Search, a novel search engine indexing machine for learning-related web pages. He has won the Andrew Carnegie Society Scholarship, the Microsoft Technical award (in both 1995 and 1996), and the Bell Atlantic Network Services Scholarship. In the 1993 International Mathematical Olympiad, he won a silver medal, placing 73rd. Andrew had a 4.0 grade point average (on a 4.0 scale). While an undergraduate, he was a joint head of Earth, an active campus-based environmental group.