Andrea Grimes of the College of Computer and Information Science has won the top award in the Computing Research Association 2005 Outstanding Undergraduate Award competition. The male award was won by a student from MIT. Runners-up included students from institutions such as Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Columbia, Berkeley, and Harvard. The award is a prestigious one, because the Association is the primary organization that focuses on computer science research, covering issues of policy, information, human resources, and community. Its members include the PhD-granting computer science departments in the US and Canada. Andrea’s award included a $1,000 cash prize that was presented at a major national research conference.
The award is primarily based on Andrea’s research. In Professor Futrelle’s laboratory, she built a key system for research on computational linguistics applied to the Biology literature. She also worked with Professor Tarasewich on Human-Computer Interaction privacy issues for mobile devices. As an undergraduate, Andrea co-authored three published papers and had two additional papers submitted.
Andrea’s qualifications go well beyond her stellar academic record and other prizes to include instructing in a community center, mentoring local high school students, and prominent involvement in various choirs at Northeastern.
In the Fall of 2005, Andrea entered graduate school at Georgia Tech in the program for Human Centered Computing.
