University of Minnesota Students Place First in Microsoft Programming Contest

For the second time in two years University of Minnesota students have placed first in a Microsoft Programming contest. Undergraduates Saeed Ahkter and Moe Khosravy won the top honors in the 2001 Microsoft .NET Best Student Awards 2001.

Students in North American colleges and universities were invited to submit proposals for XML Web services built for the Microsoft .NET Platform. In December close to 100 semifinalists were chosen to create the services that were proposed and compete in the finals. The contest judges: Microsoft developers, faculty, and industry professionals, chose the top three winners. The entry from Ahkter and Khosravy edged out all other entries, including some submitted by graduate students.

The winning entry, RenderFarm.NET, is a Web service that processes and renders high-resolution 3D scenes and animation sequences into a variety of image file formats and movies. It accepts 3D data in the form of XML and returns a URL specifying the address of the finished product, which can then be downloaded by the user to virtually any PC, cellular phone, or PDA. The usefulness of the application lies in the fact that there are many scenes that can simply not be rendered on normal workstations. Saeed Ahkter is a senior Computer Science major. He is a former Microsoft Software Development Engineer Intern (2001). He specializes in web related technologies and is currently an independent .NET web application developer for the Carlson School of Management at the U of MN. Saeed was interviewed for the Fall/Winter 2000 SoundByte.

Moe Khosravy is a junior in neuroscience in the College of Biological Sciences. However, he plans to switch formally to computer science this fall, and also keep an organic chemistry major. He is a cofounder of CodeBlazer Technologies, a multimedia software development company that the University spun off to the founders and investors. Moe specializes in 3D and multimedia application development with a passion for entertainment technologies. He is currently consulting on a .NET project for the Carlson School of Management.

Saeed and Moe each won $15,000 as first place winners. Microsoft also gave the University of Minnesota scholarship fund $15,000. Each team member was awarded a trip to Tech.Ed 2002 in New Orleans in April. RenderFarm.NET also won the People's Choice award for overall best solution, voted on by all of the contestants. The prize was an Xbox game system and games.

The International .NET competition includes corporations. RenderFarm .NET was automatically entered in the international competition as winner of the North American (Academic) contest. The winner will be announced at Microsoft's Fusion 2002 on July 11. If RenderFarm.NET wins again, the University will receive $100,000 and Moe and Saeed will receive a smaller amount. They have continued development on the application since the version that won in April and now have a much faster program.

Moe and Saeed plan to market RenderFarm.NET. Several companies have expressed interest. For more information see http://www.renderfarm3d.com.

Natalie Linnell Chosen to be Student Speaker at IT Graduation Ceremonies

Senior Computer Science major Natalie Linnell, from St. Cloud, Minnesota, was chosen to give the student graduation speech at the Institute of Technology Commencement ceremonies on May 10. She talked about the importance of living a passionate life and loving your work. She thinks that if you are not excited about what you do and don't feel that it is important, you need to have the courage to change your work, since work consumes over half your waking hours. Professor Nikos Papanikolopoulos, an instructor of hers in two classes, suggested that she apply to be the student graduation speaker.

Natalie's words of advice to computer science undergrads are that they need to like what they do, and if they do not like their course work, they probably will not like the work in the computer field either.

Among classes Natalie found valuable were Structure of Computer Programming I and Algorithms and Data Structures. Her areas of interest include programming languages and computational logic. She will attend graduate school in computer science at the University of Minnesota this fall.

Kristen Stubbs Receives Goldwater Scholarship

Computer Science major Kristen Stubbs has received a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship to support her senior year of study at the University of Minnesota. Congress established the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program in 1986 to honor Senator Barry M. Goldwater and to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields. Since a school can nominate only four students for this award, the application is a two-part process, first to be nominated to represent the school, and then to receive a scholarship. 309 Goldwater scholarships were awarded for the 2002-2003 academic year from a field of 1,155 nominees.

As is true of virtually all of the Goldwater Scholars, Kristen plans to continue her education in graduate school pursuing a Ph.D. She would like to work in the area of human-computer interaction. Since last summer she has worked at the Center for Distributed Robotics on distributed robot software. Kristen is from Kansas City, Missouri. In deciding on a college to attend, she did research on various computer science departments. Since the University of Minnesota had an excellent computer science department, and she liked it here, the University of Minnesota was her choice. She has been programming computers since first grade when she taught herself BASIC and she has always loved working with and programming computers.

James Esser Competes Successfully in Sun Microsystems and Topcoder Collegiate Challenge

TopCoder hosts programming tournaments weekly on the Web. Both professional and collegiate programmers from around the world can participate in weekly contests. The benefits include cash prizes, a chance to practice programming skills, and an opportunity to be more visible in the job market. In fact TopCoder was started by some people who wanted a way to assess skills of prospects for a consulting company. James B. Esser, a 2002 computer science graduate, was among 16 students who made it to the semifinals, held at MIT on April 19th. He won $1,000 in that particular competition.

-Bobbie Othmer