In June, recent graduate Will Price ’19 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Congress on Evolutionary Computation in Wellington, New Zealand. 

• Price presented research on his coauthored paper with Schrum, “Neuroevolution of Multimodal Ms. Pac-ManControllers under Partially Observable Conditions,” based on his SCOPE 2018 research, which resulted in a first-place entry in the Ms. Pac-Man vs. Ghost Team Competition.
• Schrum presented a paper coauthored with SCOPE 2018 student Bryan Hollingsworth ’20 titled “Infinite Art Gallery: A Game World of Interactively Evolved Artwork.”

Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Summit of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), in Nashville, TN, May 14–16, as part of their ongoing work with NCWIT’s Extension Services Learning Circles. In keeping with the theme of the summit, “Where Conversations Lead to Change,” they met with change leaders at other schools, participated in interactive workshops designed to help interrupt bias, and heard from plenary speakers from multiple disciplinary backgrounds on improving diversity and inclusion in computing.

Computer science major Adina Friedman ’19 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum have had a peer-reviewed publication accepted to the IEEE Conference on Games, to take place in London, U.K., August 20–23. The publication, “Desirable Behaviors for Companion Bots in First-Person Shooters,” describes research that began as part of SCOPE in summer 2018 and was followed up in fall 2018 with a human-subject study involving 30 members of the SU community. The videos, code, and other content associated with the study are available online.

Southwestern had strong representation at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges South Central Conference at the University of Texas at Dallas on April 5. Students presented the following posters:

• “Voluntunity: Building a Volunteer Opportunity Website with Django” by TaylorAxtell ’19, SaraBoyd ’20, LaurenGillespie ’19, Danielle Orbach ’19, and Colin Scruggs ’19, part of their computer-science capstone work with Associate Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony.
• “Creating a User-Friendly System to Facilitate Tracking and Entry of Internship Hours” by Adina Friedman ’19, William Price ’19, Elyssa Sliheet ’19, Isabel Tweraser ’19, and Jacob Yager ’20, also part of the computer-science capstone.
• “Verification of Welfare Transactions on the Blockchain” by Adanna Court ’19, Devon Fulcher ‘19, Bobby Garza ‘19, Alexander Hoffman ‘20, and Daniel Maldonado ‘19, also part of the computer-science capstone.
• “Project Pen and Paper: Operations Research for Prospective Students” by Katie Dyo ‘19, Devon Fulcher ‘19, Alexander Hoffman ‘20, Daniel Maldonado ‘19, and Greg O’Brien ‘19, work that originated in the Operations Research course in Fall 2018 taught by Anthony.
• “Desirable Behaviors for Companion Bots in First-Person Shooters” by Adina Friedman ‘19, based on her SCOPE 2018 summer research with Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.
• “Evolving Custom Convolutional Neural Network Architectures in SZ-Tetris” by Devon Fulcher ‘19, also based on SCOPE 2018 research with Schrum. This poster won fourth place in the undergraduate poster competition.
• “Infinite  Art Gallery: A  Game World of Interactively  Evolved Artwork” by Bryan Hollingsworth ‘20, also based on SCOPE 2018 research with Schrum. This poster won third place in the undergraduate poster competition.

Students Boyd, Court, Friedman, Fulcher, Garza, Hoffman, Hollingsworth, and Orbach, as well as Schrum, attended the conference.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum has had two peer-reviewed publications accepted to appear in the 2019 Congress on Evolutionary Computation, each with student coauthors. Will Price ’19 is the primary author on “Neuroevolution of Multimodal Ms. Pac-Man Controllers Under Partially Observable Conditions,” which describes his first place entry in the international Ms. Pac-Man vs. Ghost Team Competition in 2018. Bryan Hollingsworth ’20 is the primary author on “Infinite Art Gallery: A Game World of Interactively Evolved Artwork,” which describes a game that was part of a human-subject study at Southwestern last fall.