David J. Eck

List of Honors Projects and
Independent Studies Supervised

Independent work is an important part of the experience of many students at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Many students do independent studies and honors work.

An independent study is a one-term project that counts as a course. Many students use independent studies as a way of covering material not found in our regular courses. Others do special projects, such as a single large-scale programming project. Generally, a student doing independent study meets twice a week with the professor supervising the course.

An Honors Project is a full-year project, usually undertaken in the senior year. It is equivalent of several independent studies on a single topic, except that it must result in a long paper (generally on the order of fifty to one hundred pages) and it culminates in an oral examination administered by three examiners.

Another oportunity for independent work is offered by summer research projects supported by the Colleges. Project proposals are funded competatively. A student who is awarded one of these summer research grants works intensively on a project for about eight weeks.

This is a list of the Honors projects, independent study courses, and summer research projects supervised by Professor David Eck.

Honors Projects Supervised:

• "The Formal Syntax and Semantics of Programming Languages," William Merrick, 1987-88.
• "The Mathematics of Musical Sound Synthesis," Malcolm Gately, 1988-89.
• "Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos," David Martin, 1988-89.
• "Differential Geometry and the Geometrization of Physics," Vincent Cassano, 1989-90.
• "Database Theory, Implementation, and Applications," Jim La Monica, 1990-91.
• "Fractals, Fractional Dimension and Iterated Function Systems," Scott Davidson, 1991-92.
• "The Mathematics of the Mind: Semantics, Language and the Nature of Intelligence," Nathaniel Poor, 1991-92.
• "Genetic Algorithms: Using Computers to Simulate Evolution and Solve Hard Problems," Hiroki Kobayashi, 1996.
• "Network Security," Dominik Weis, 1998.
• "The Genetic Algorithms Approach For Finding Approximate Solutions to NP-Complete Problems," Oscar Barney, 2003-04.
• "Using the Genetic Algorithm to Evolve Cooperative Behavior," Evan Hourigan, 2003-04.
• "MathOML: An XML Languge for Visualization of Mathematical Objects," Joshua Davis, 2009-2010.
• "ISTAT: Online Interface for Hypothesis Testing and Statistical Analysis," Shaun Viguerie, 2011-2012.
• "Online Virtual Math Museum: Building a Virtual Math Museum with Modern Web Technologies and an XML Infrastructure," Alex Kittelberger, 2012-2013.
• "ScoutPlus: A Web Application for the Development of Advanced Hockey Analytics," Frank Oplinger, 2017-18.

Independent Studies Supervised:

• "Lisp and Artificial Intelligence," Richard Mitchell, Winter 1987.
• "GOBOT: A project in Artificial Intelligence," Matthew Warburton, Winter 1987.
• "Abstract Algebra," Jim Ford, Spring 1989.
• "Mathematics and Sound," Jeff Rothenberg, Fall 1990.
• "Ray Tracing in Computer Graphics," Jeff Rothenberg, Spring 1991.
• "Graphics Programming for the IBM PC," Marc Boegner, Fall 1991.
• "Appletalk Network Programming," Galen Schreck, Winter 1992.
• "Networking and TCP/IP," Jude Sylvestre, Winter 1994.
• "HTML Authoring," Joe Wood, Winter 1995.
• "HTTP Client/server Applications," Derek Nolan, Spring 1995.
• "Programming in C," Alexandra Figuereo and Chuck Mayers, Fall 1995.
• "Networking and TCP/IP," Ivan Wood, Fall 1995.
• "Differential Geometry of Manifolds," Hiroki Kobayashi and Patrick Rieff, Fall 1995.
• "Network Programming with TCP/IP and WinSock," Ivan Wood, Winter and Spring 1996.
• "Programming in Java," with 9 students, Spring 1996.
• "Discrete Structures," Rory Carr, Fall 1996.
• "Computer System and Network Security," Joel Armani, Fall 1996 and Winter 1997.
• "Artificial Intelligence and LISP Programming," Lynn Robitaille, Fall 1996 and Winter 1997.
• "Graphics Programming with VRML," Matt Littlejohn and Lucas Jordan, Winter 1997.
• "Web Site Programming with CGI," Rory Carr, Winter 1997.
• "Genetic Algorithms," Lynn Robitaille, Spring 1997
• "Random Dot Stereograms," Nat Wetherbee and C.J. Moutinho, Spring 1997.
• "Java and Internet Programming," Dennis Cleary, Spring 1997.
• "VRML Graphics," Sean Carson, Fall 1997.
• "UNIX System Administration," Rory Carr, Fall 1997.
• "Web Site Design," Ford Curran, Winter 1998.
• "Computer Database Design," Rory Carr, Spring 1998.
• "Java Programming," Derek Shaffer, Spring 1998.
• "Advanced UNIX Administration," Dominik Weis, Fall 1998.
• "Java Programming," Sean Carson, Fall 1998.
• "Graphics Programming with DirectX," Lucas Jordan, Winter 1999.
• "Data Structures," Mozammel Kabir and Enrique Villalona, Winter 1999.
• "UNIX/Linux System Administration," David Brezee, Derek Shaffer, and Matej Ucen, Winter 1999.
• "Programming Computer Strategy Games: Chinese Checkers," Margrethe Flanders, Kari Morse, and Kelly Nichols, Winter 1999.
• "Linux System Administration," Sean Carson, Mozammel Kabir, Carmin Moutinho, Tim Seit, and Enrique Villalona, Spring 1999.
• "Seminar on Advanced Java Programming," with eleven students, Spring 1999.
• "Algorithms," Chris Compton, Fall 2000.
• "GUI Programming with QT," Zach Brusko, Matej Ucen, and Gabe Weinstock, Fall 2000.
• "Linux System Administration," Karl Brautigam, Spring 2002.
• "Network Security," David Sugar, Spring 2002.
• "Web Site Development with PHP and MySQL," Walter Bengochea, Dan Kartzman, and Brian Lenihan, Spring 2002.
• "Graphics Seminar," Terrence Costello, Steve Cushman, Brian Lenihan, Ben Weiss, Fall 2002.
• "Network Security," Omar Johnny, Spring 2003.
• "Computer Graphics with Ray-Tracing," Chris Hughes, Spring 2003.
• "Machine Translation," Karl Brautigam, Fall 2003.
• "Deveoping an Interactive Web Site," Mark Codere, Omar Johnny, and Chris Hughes, Spring 2004.
• "Web Site Development with Java Server Faces," Brandon Currie, Spring 2005.
• "Readings in Natural and Artificial Intelligence," Michael Tien, Spring 2005.
• "Readings in Natural Language Processing," Victoria Jeffries, Fall 2005.
• "Web Site Programming with PHP and AJAX," Ben Schechter, Spring 2006.
• "Complex Analysis," Christopher Hagar, Spring 2007.
• "Web Site Programming," Richard Klein, Spring 2008.
• "Abstract Algebra I: Group Theory," Christine Luongo, Spring 2009.
• "Web and Network Security," Nate Davidoff, Spring 2009.
• "Flash and ActionScript Development," Travis Pierce, Fall 2009.
• "Computer Graphics with OpenGL and JOGL," Franz Hahn, Henning Metzmacher, and Fabian Wahle, Fall 2009.
• "Distributed Computing with Map Reduce and Hadoop," Lex Kridler, Fall 2009.
• "Collaborative Filtering for Web 2.0," Lex Kridler, Spring 2010.
• "Web Site Programming Project: A New Departmental Web Site," Travis Pierce, Fall 2010.
• "High-Performance Computing on GPUs, using OpenCL," Max Beckett, Fall 2010.
• "Web Site Programming," Alex Kittelberger, Shaun Viguerie, and Matt Weichselbaum, Fall 2011.
• "Web Site Programming," Kingsley Adarkwah, Erxin Du, Sam Garivaltis, and Sam Heinle, Spring 2013.
• "Web Site Programming," John Darby, Nick Schmidt, and Bowen Wang, Fall 2013.
• "Exploring Affiliate Marketing Fraud," Mark Benya, Fall 2013.
• "Using AI Techniques to Detect Affiliate Marketing Fraud," Mark Benya, Spring 2014.
• "Web Site Programming with PHP and MySQL," Joeseph Bisesto, Spring 2014.
• "Web Site Design and Implementation," Stephen Gemmiti, Spring 2014.
• "Web Site Programming with JSP and MySQL," Joseph Howe, Spring 2014.
• "Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology," Aaron Ackbarali, Fall 2014.
• "Quantum Computing," Felix Taschbach and James Rolls, Fall 2015.
• "Concrete Math / Automata Theory," Matthew McPartlon, Fall 2015.
• "Web Site Programming with JSP, Servlets, and MySQL," Zhirong Gao, Fall 2016.
• "Fractals: Math and Music," Mark Curiel, Fall 2016.
• "Developing a Game Engine with DirectX," Garrett Tongue, Spring 2017.
• "C Programming," Sam Ash, Spring 2018.
• "Computer Graphics Rendering: Theory and Practice," Samatha Petruzzo, Fall 2018.
• "Web Site Programming with PHP and MySQL," Alex Beal, Spring 2019
• "Foundations of Computations," Yusong Cao, Fall 2019
• "Contributing to an open source astronomy project: Refactoring legacy code for echelle spectra," Max Brodheim, Spring 2020
• "Computer networking and the internet protocol stack," Emily Kreps, Spring 2020
• "Developing a framework for financial data analysis," Alexander Cohen, Spring 2020
• "Web Site Programming with PHP and MySQL," Raja Hammad Mehmood, Fall 2021
• "Distributed programs, distributed data: MPI and Hadoop", Kidus Ayele, Fall 2022
• "Learning C++ through game programming", Kieran Galloway, Fall 2022
• "Intermediate programming in Java", Kyle Gutowski, Fall 2022
• "Using Oracle Data Guard and Fastback for 'near production' databases", Dean Levy, Fall 2022
• "GPU programming with CUDA", Zihan Zhou, Fall 2022

Summer Research Projects Supervised:

• "Differential Geometry," Vincent Cassano, Summer 1989.
• "Networking and Distributed Processing," Cristy Kulasingham, Summer 1992.
• "The Genetic Algorithm," Hiroki Kobayashi, Summer 1994.
• "Clusters of Linux Computers for Distributed Computing," Gabriel Weinstock, Summer 1999.
• "Software Development for Math Visualization," Joshua Davis and Keenan Simons, Summer 2008.