Accolades: Ingrid Russell

Ingrid Russell, professor of computer science, A&S, recently received $10,000 supplemental funding from the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program (NSF REU). The funding is to support two undergraduate computer science students working with Russell on a research project in machine learning. Machine learning is a field within artificial intelligence that involves the development of systems or computer programs that improve on their performance in a specific domain based on experience.

The REU grant is intended to supplement a 2-year grant in the amount of $99,469 that Russell had received from NSF’s Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement program (NSF CCLI). The NSF CCLI project involves the development of a framework and course material for teaching artificial intelligence topics using a unifying theme of machine learning.

Two computer science students, Shona Taiwo and Rob Scata, who worked with Russell last year on a research project, presented their work titled “Using Machine Learning Techniques and Data Mining Tools for Web Document Classification” during the undergraduate student research session at the Consortium for Computing Sciences Northeast conference that was held April 22-23, 2005, in Providence, R.I. The student research session was sponsored by the national computer science honor society. Scata had received a NASA undergraduate research fellowship.

The new NSF REU grant is intended to support two undergraduate students working on extending the above work.