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"Knox professors strongly recommend that their students pursue independent projects, so I took their advice. "

Under the supervision of Professor David Bunde, Andrei Papancea's
on-campus research involved learning parallel programming languages, developing educational materials, and evaluating how suitable they are for the classroom and actual applications. The ultimate goal is to aid the adoption of appropriate languages into courses at Knox and elsewhere. His research was sponsored in full by the Baker-Velde Award, which he received at the Honors Banquet.

Tell us more about your research.
I worked with another student, Michael Graf '15, revising two tutorials that were initially written by other Knox students. We brought them up to date, added more conclusive examples and explanations, and we changed the layout to make it more reader friendly. The second tutorial that we worked on -- for a programming language called Chapel -- has already received positive feedback from a professor at another university who expressed interest in using our tutorial for teaching.

What did you hope to learn?
I had two goals for this project: to learn more about parallel programming languages and to get a better grasp of what research entails.

What was the best part of your research?
The fact that it was flexible and that we quickly got to a point where we knew what we were doing.

What inspired you to pursue the project?
Besides the fact that I accumulated experience in computer science and research, due to this project I am strengthening my graduate school applications considerably.

Knox professors strongly recommend that their students pursue independent projects, so I took their advice. So far, I have conducted four independent studies that are somewhat related to computer science. These experiences gave me more drive to pursue a more ambitious project: this research. I am also pursuing an Honors project and am confident this experience will help me tackle it better.

Read more about Andrei's research with Professor Bunde.