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George Armah ’08 and Marquis Scholar Timothy Zirkel ’08 have been accepted into the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) Student Scholarship Program sponsored by Apple Inc.
The scholarships provide an all-expense paid trip to WWDC 2008, which runs June 9-13 in San Francisco. Participants have the opportunity to grow their technical skills through participation in over 150 technical sessions and hands-on labs presented by Apple engineers and experts, as well as network with numerous professionals in their field.
“I think that the opportunities for undergraduate research at Lafayette have made me a stronger candidate for this and other scholarships, as well as for graduate school,” says Zirkel, who graduated May 24 with a B.S. in mathematics and an A.B. in computer science.
“Lafayette is very unique in its dedication to a liberal arts education,” says Armah, who also graduated May 24 with a B.S. in mathematics and an A.B. in computer science.
Both students have taken advantage of Lafayette’s focus on undergraduate research and close student-faculty interaction.
As an EXCEL scholar, Zirkel has studied computer networks under the supervision of Xiaoyan Li, assistant professor of computer science, and developed a visualization scheme to simulate flowing fluid, with Clifford Reiter, professor of mathematics. He was one of nine students nationally to receive a scholarship award from Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), the international honor society for the computing and information disciplines.
Zirkel has also taken advantage of Lafayette’s focus on the arts being president of the Arts Society, musical director of the Chorduroys a cappella group, a member of the College Choirs, and a trombone player in the Jazz Ensemble. He plans to begin a computer science Ph.D. program at the University of Delaware this coming fall.
Through the EXCEL program, Armah spent the summer of 2007 with Rexford Ahene, professor of economics and business, developing a national Land Information System network in Uganda. He also performed EXCEL research with Robert Root, associate professor of mathematics, developing a mathematical model to help investigate vertebrae evolution. Armah also performed two independent research projects with Ge Xia, assistant professor of computer science, and Louis Zulli, associate professor of mathematics.
Also this summer, Armah has been accepted to participate in the Google Summer of Code 2008 program, which offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. Armah’s project will involve working with MacPorts, a software system used to install various open source programs on the Mac OS X operating system. He will be developing a MacPorts framework that will enable more efficient communication between the software and the operating system.
After the summer, Armah will begin working as a software design engineer for Microsoft’s Server Tools Online division in Redmond, Wash. He also plans to begin a graduate program in mathematics and computer science.