Ken McGrady has made a big mark in a short amount of time in the College of Computer and Information Science. As a second semester middler, he has accomplished more in two and half years than most accomplish in their undergraduate careers. He has served the university as an orientation leader, a CCIS student panelist during Welcome and Orientation session, peer tutor, resident assistant for the Computer and Information Science Living Learning Community (LLC) and lab proctor. Ken is also president of the campus group NUeats, vice president of the CCIS student group-chapter of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), a writer on the University Admissions New Student blog (where he shared his activities and interests to prospective CCIS students), and an active supporter of the Northeastern Huskies Men’s Hockey team. This engagement with campus and college life has not come at the expense of his grades, as Ken maintains an impressive 3.94 GPA.
Aside from his social and academic engagements at Northeastern University, Ken maintains an active interest in the research community. He organized the first ever CCIS Research Fair in the spring of 2008 to encourage students to participate in research. During the spring and early summer of 2008, he served as a research assistant in CCIS. In this capacity, he experimented with a language and theorem prover, ACL2, for educational purposes. Additionally, he co-wrote an introduction to a programming environment for the program called DrACLa.
Later that summer, while on co-op for the MITRE Corporation, Ken worked on several projects enhancing existing software that is utilized by over 6,000 employees in the company. Further, he aided in the development of various tools that make the process of setting up video conferencing more user-friendly, as well as explored new technologies like Dojo and Google Gears for MITRE’s use in future projects.
Ken was recently named a Northeastern University Presidential Scholar. This is a highly competitive award given to students able to maintain a 3.8 GPA, or better. Clearly, in Ken’s short career at Northeastern, he has distinguished himself an integral member of the university community both socially and intellectually. “The experience is what you make of it. I am in such a supportive atmosphere that nothing seems impossible to me. I set myself goals and challenges and I work on following through.” The College of Computer and Information Science congratulates him on this tremendous achievement and greatly looks forward to the fruitful remainder of his college career, and beyond.
