Informatics student honored in Outstanding Undergraduate Award competition

Katrina Panovich, senior, Warrenville, Ill., has been selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association’s Outstanding Undergraduate Award competition for 2008, sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs. 

Nominating Katrina for the award were Profs. Santiago Schnell and Fil Menczer, IU School of Informatics.  Katrina is currently pursuing research on user interfaces for social information management under the supervision of Prof. Menczer.

“Katrina’s enthusiasm and performance placed her at the top of my Web programming class in which she developed an outstanding Web site for searching and mapping restaurants,” said Menczer.  “For her undergraduate thesis in Informatics, Katrina is designing a new bookmark manager for GiveALink.org, a social search and recommendation engine.  The tool will integrate tagging and hierarchical classification of sites, research that fuses Human-Computer Interaction and Web data mining.  She has demonstrated excellent research ability and potential.”

In making the announcement CRA noted that an impressive group of nominees have made significant contributions to research projects and papers, conference presentations, created software artifacts that are widely used, and served as tutors and community volunteers.

"The CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Award recognizes undergraduates who demonstrate excellent in computing research, in their academic record, and service to the community,” noted Prof. Schnell.  “The competition is always fierce and includes students from top universities in the U.S. and Canada.  We are delighted and honored by the recognition Katrina has received."

CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Award Winners 2008

Winner, Female Award: Rachel Sealfon, Princeton University
Winner, Male Award: Kevin Dick, California Institute of Technology
Winner, Male Award: Chuan Shen Foo, Stanford University

Runner-Up, Female Award: Raluca Popa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Finalists, Female Award:
Adrienne Felt, University of Virginia
Iris Howley, Drexel University
Donya Quick, Southern Methodist University
Franziska Roesner, University of Texas at Austin

Finalists, Male Award:
Adrian Dalca, University of Toronto
Henry DeYoung, Carnegie Mellon University
Lawrence Erickson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Eugene Greene, University of Windsor
Evan Hoke, Carnegie Mellon University
Arthur Mahoney, Utah State University
Rajesh Ramakrishnan, Columbia University
Yuanchen Zhu, Harvard University

Honorable Mentions, Female:
Lucy Abramyan, Harvey Mudd College
Tanya Cashorali, Northeastern University
Margaret (Meg) Davis, Texas A&M University
Jennifer Dolson, University of Virginia
 Polina Dudnik, Binghamton University, SUNY
Alana Edmunds, Syracuse University
Gwendolyn Einfeld, Calvin College
Alina Ene, Princeton University
Maja Frydrychowicz, McGill University
Ekaterina Gonina, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Paola Gonzalez, University of South Florida
Natasha Kholgade, Rochester Institute of Technology
Siu Yu Cherie Kwan, Cornell University
Katrina LaCurts, University of Maryland
Dhivya Padmanabhan, Texas A&M University
Katrina Panovich, Indiana University, Bloomington
Lori Pietraszek, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Cristina Pop, University of British Columbia
Kirsten Stark, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Catherine Wah, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Kristina Wanous, University of Northern Iowa
Dana Wen, University of Washington
Juliette Zerick, University of Mary Washington
Irene Zhang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Honorable Mentions, Male:
Kurt Ackermann, Purdue University
Kareem Amin, Cornell University
Mitchell Beard, Georgetown University
Gilbert Bernstein, University of Texas at Austin
Kyle Byerly, Iowa State University
Lee Callender, University of Michigan
Rhys Causey, University of Toronto
Jackie Cheung, University of British Columbia
Nicholas Christman, Dartmouth College
Matthew Chu, University of Pennsylvania
Brendan Collins, Princeton University
Darren Davis, University of San Diego
Morgan Dixon, University of Maryland
Jonathon Duerig, University of Utah
Jason Fennell, Harvey Mudd College
Jeffrey Fielding, Dartmouth College
Marc Godard, Queen's University
Colin Gordon, Brown University
Mahlon Graham, University of Virginia
Arthur Guez, McGill University
Ian Haken, University of California, Berkeley
Paul Himes, Michigan Technological University
Nicholas Jalbert, University of Virginia
Aaron Johnson, Carnegie Mellon University
Christopher Jones, University of California, Berkeley
Kevin Karsch, University of Missouri - Columbia
Stephen Kent, University of Texas at Austin
Zachary Kincaid, University of Western Ontario
Michael Krainin, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Kevin Lai, University of British Columbia
George Lucchese, Texas A&M University
Mikola Lysenko, Michigan Technological University
Patrick Marion, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Grant Miller, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
David Morrison, Harvey Mudd College
Mark Rawls, University of Virginia
Fady Samuel, University of Waterloo
Tyler Steele, Cornell University
Matt Swanson, Iowa State University
Kartik Talamadupula, Arizona State University
David Tepper, University of Washington
James Thiel, Drexel University
Anthony Waters, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Caleb Wells, Texas A&M University
Sam Whittle, University of Washington
Marc Winners, Drexel University
Benjamin Wood, Williams College
Loren Yu, Stanford University
Luke Zarko, University of Pennsylvania