Monthly Archives: September 2024

Guest post: CS student experiences at DIS Copenhagen

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Today in our weekly CS Pizza talk and discussion series, the CS department hosted a panel of senior CS majors sharing their off-campus study experiences. Five juniors went abroad last year, and four were able to join the lunchtime panel. I was unable to attend because of my daughter’s early school dismissal, but I hear it went really well!

LJ Friedman, who was unable to join the panel due to a conflicting class, offered to write up his experiences. I offered to share it as a guest post in my blog, and here it is!

Hi! My name is LJ Friedman. I’m a senior Computer Science major and am expecting to minor in Psychology, Math, and Music. I chose to study in Copenhagen because of the offered classes and the location. The program had several courses I was interested in that were more niche and/or didn’t exist at Whitman, and I was excited to take a spread of both Computer Science and Psychology courses that covered topics I otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to take. I was primarily interested in the Game Design course, which focused on teaching game design, coding organization, and Unity and C#. There were also Psychology courses that I was particularly interested in, specifically a course on identity, conflict, and discrimination. 

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New colleagues 2024

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One of the responsibilities of the department chair is to introduce new colleagues at the first faculty meeting of the new academic year. So I just wrote one-minute introductions for my new colleagues, Sachintha Pitigala and Richard Torres Molina. I thought I’d share them here:

Sachintha Pitigala joins us this year from Sri Lanka, where he is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Kelaniya. Sachintha is not a stranger to the United States, however, as he earned his PhD in Computational Science at Middle Tennessee State University. His dissertation focused on “Developing a personalized article retrieval system for PubMed.” At Whitman, Sachintha will draw on his depth of experience to teach our introductory course, CS 167, as well as a course on Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence this spring. His most recent research applies machine learning techniques to simulating drone dynamics.

Richard Torres Molina joins us from Virginia Tech, where he just completed a Masters degree in Computer Science and Applications. Richard, too, is a global citizen. After earning a bachelors degree in Information Technology in his home country of Ecuador, Richard went on to earn a further certificate in Information Technology in Shenzhen, China, a certificate in Chinese Language and Culture in Beijing, and a Masters degree in Advanced Systems Dependability jointly from the University of St Andrews and the University of Lorraine. At Whitman, Richard will be teaching a special topics course on Intelligent Systems for Sustainable Development Goals, as well as our regular courses on Data Structures and Software Design.

Watch here for the ongoing saga of course registration for the fall 2024 semester. In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Sachintha and Richard!