Undergraduate
Saint Michael's rugby stand-out does computer science research funded by a $3,500 summer research grant
"Independent research appeals to me, maybe more than a regular classroom," says David Kronenberg
Contact Information:
Buff Lindau, Public Relations
802.654.2536
blindau@smcvt.edu
President of the rugby club and computer science enthusiast! That's the beauty of a liberal arts college where both of these passions can be nurtured and developed. David Kronenberg, a Saint Michael's College senior computer science major from Winchester, Mass., was awarded a $3,500 Vice President for Academic Affairs Student Summer Research Grant for an eight-week independent research project.
The rugby playing, computer science student has been pursuing a study titled "Investigating the Impact of Seed Value Choices for the K-Means Clustering Algorithm," under the direction of Professor of Computer Science John Trono.
The son of Dennis Kronenberg and Alice Rogers of Winchester, Mass., David Kronenberg graduated from Boston College High School in 2006 before coming to Saint Michael's.
"Independent research appeals to me, maybe more than a regular classroom," said Kronenberg. "It's open-ended and you can discover new things, not just carry out an assignment; if I find something that I think would make sense, I can explore it on my own." About his summer research he said, "It was excellent to work on a single project; it was more rewarding to have a long project rather than a lot of small assignments." He is writing a final report now and will likely be submitting it to the spring 2010 Hudson River Undergraduate Math Conference, and will propose it for a poster session during the Saint Michael's Research Symposium Day in the spring of 2010.
"Clustering analysis is an unsupervised learning method that can be used to study the structure within large sets of data, and computer programs are an ideal way of employing these strategies," Professor Trono explained. "Bioinformatics, for instance, is just one of many different scientific areas that can benefit from these techniques; they can help identify genes in microarray data for instance," he said. "There are many other applications as well where large amounts of data can be reduced to a much smaller set of data, once you establish where the clusters occur, thus making the data more useful and accessible. There are also quite a few different types of clustering algorithms - some work better than others on different types of data," he said.
Professor Trono added, "These research opportunities allow the students to integrate the knowledge and skills they've acquired from many different classes, and apply them to solving a problem they've never seen before. This also provides them with a glimpse of what they may be doing after they graduate. Personally, I also benefit from their fresh views," he said. "They force me to rethink certain aspects of a project's initial design, and to consider additional functionality and/or experimentation as their projects progress."
Saint Michael's College is a distinctive Catholic liberal arts college that provides an education with a social conscience, producing graduates with the intellectual tools they need to lead a successful, purposeful life that will contribute to peace and justice in our world. Founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, Saint Michael's is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 371 Colleges, ranking as 9th among institutions in Quality of Life and 2nd in Town-Gown Relations. It is one of only 270 institutions nationwide, and one of only 20 Catholic colleges, with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and its professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last nine years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings. Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns.
Buff Lindau, Public Relations
802.654.2536
blindau@smcvt.edu
President of the rugby club and computer science enthusiast! That's the beauty of a liberal arts college where both of these passions can be nurtured and developed. David Kronenberg, a Saint Michael's College senior computer science major from Winchester, Mass., was awarded a $3,500 Vice President for Academic Affairs Student Summer Research Grant for an eight-week independent research project.The rugby playing, computer science student has been pursuing a study titled "Investigating the Impact of Seed Value Choices for the K-Means Clustering Algorithm," under the direction of Professor of Computer Science John Trono.
The son of Dennis Kronenberg and Alice Rogers of Winchester, Mass., David Kronenberg graduated from Boston College High School in 2006 before coming to Saint Michael's.
"Independent research appeals to me, maybe more than a regular classroom," said Kronenberg. "It's open-ended and you can discover new things, not just carry out an assignment; if I find something that I think would make sense, I can explore it on my own." About his summer research he said, "It was excellent to work on a single project; it was more rewarding to have a long project rather than a lot of small assignments." He is writing a final report now and will likely be submitting it to the spring 2010 Hudson River Undergraduate Math Conference, and will propose it for a poster session during the Saint Michael's Research Symposium Day in the spring of 2010.
"Clustering analysis is an unsupervised learning method that can be used to study the structure within large sets of data, and computer programs are an ideal way of employing these strategies," Professor Trono explained. "Bioinformatics, for instance, is just one of many different scientific areas that can benefit from these techniques; they can help identify genes in microarray data for instance," he said. "There are many other applications as well where large amounts of data can be reduced to a much smaller set of data, once you establish where the clusters occur, thus making the data more useful and accessible. There are also quite a few different types of clustering algorithms - some work better than others on different types of data," he said.
Professor Trono added, "These research opportunities allow the students to integrate the knowledge and skills they've acquired from many different classes, and apply them to solving a problem they've never seen before. This also provides them with a glimpse of what they may be doing after they graduate. Personally, I also benefit from their fresh views," he said. "They force me to rethink certain aspects of a project's initial design, and to consider additional functionality and/or experimentation as their projects progress."
Saint Michael's College is a distinctive Catholic liberal arts college that provides an education with a social conscience, producing graduates with the intellectual tools they need to lead a successful, purposeful life that will contribute to peace and justice in our world. Founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, Saint Michael's is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 371 Colleges, ranking as 9th among institutions in Quality of Life and 2nd in Town-Gown Relations. It is one of only 270 institutions nationwide, and one of only 20 Catholic colleges, with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and its professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last nine years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings. Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns.
