As many of you are probably aware, last December I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and started working on my Master’s degree in January (also in Computer Science at BYU). One of the requirements for getting your Master’s degree is that you need to complete a Master’s thesis. Typically, the topics for these theses come from the work of one of the research labs in the CS department, of which there are about 20 to choose from in wide array of areas. As a Master’s student, you can either work in one of the laboratories and get paid for it, or just work with the professor in charge of the lab on your own to get your thesis taken care of. Here’s a list of the labs (you can click on the links to learn more about them if you’d like):
- Advanced Database Applications
- Applied Machine Learning
- Computational Science Laboratory
- Computer Graphics, Vision, and Image Processing Laboratory
- Data Engineering Group
- Data Mining
- Enterprise Computing
- Human-Centered Machine Intelligence
- Hyperdimensional Research
- Information and Decision Algorithm Laboratories
- Interactive Computing Everywhere
- Internet Research Lab
- Internet Security Research Lab
- Mobile Computing Lab
- Natural Language Processing
- Neural Network and Machine Learning Laboratory
- Object-Oriented System Modeling Lab
- Performance Evaluation Lab
- Verification and Validation Laboratory
Previously, I’ve been working for a company called Qualtrics.com doing web development. Although, I really enjoyed working there and it paid well, I decided that I wanted to work on campus in one of the labs rather than try and balance my life between work and my Master’s program. So, last semester, for several months I looked into the different labs and tried to decide which I found interesting. I met with several of the faculty advisors for the labs and in the end decided to work with the Internet Security Research Lab.
I started working with them three weeks ago and it’s been a pretty good experience. It’s quite a bit different than my previous job. At Qualtrics, we had a product that we were selling to people and so the company was run like a business. Although my hours were very flexible, I had specific assignments I needed to get done and was expected to work on them while at work. Working in a research lab is a lot more relaxed. Because the students in the lab are working on their education, the focus seems to be evenly split with doing well in your studies (staying on top of your classes, getting projects done on time) and the research the lab is working on.
For the first couple of weeks I was working there, I didn’t really have any specific projects I was working on but rather was told to get to know the lab’s projects over the past couple of years. Most of my “lab related” work was spent reading papers and articles that had been published out of our lab. Last week I received some real projects to work on. Basically, I’m making it so that certain websites can be logged into securely without the use of a password. Luckily, a lot of previous skills from working at Qualtrics are coming in handy here!
One thing that’s kind of fun about working in this lab is that, because we’re working at BYU, as a lab, we take time to attend the BYU devotionals and the Computer Science colloquiums together every week. The other students in the lab are all very nice and many of them have a couple of children already. The faculty advisor for the lab is Kent Seamons, he’s a really happy guy who gets excited about the projects were working on. I’m looking forward to the interesting things I’m going to be getting involved in in the coming semesters!
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