Computer Science concentrators receive honors at 2010 CRA Awards

December 11, 2009 - The Computing Research Association (CRA) honored the recipients of the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards for 2010, sponsored this year by Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs.

Three Harvard undergraduate students were among those so honored.

• Zachary Abel '11, concentrating in Mathematics and Computer Science, was named a runner-up in the male award category. Working with an MIT professor, Zachary attacked the problem of whether hinged dissections always exist—that is to say, whether a single connected, transforming robot can always fold into arbitrary shapes. Hinged dissections have been studied for more than 100 years and many had come to believe that they do not always exist. However, Zachary proved that they do in fact always exist. Based on the strength of this work, Zachary was invited to participate in the yearly collaborative Computational Geometry Workshop at which he made significant contributions in both 2008 and 2009. In addition to all this Zachary has maintained a near-perfect GPA.

• Olga Zverovich '11, concentrating in Mathematics and Computer Science, was a named a finalist in the female award category.

• Jesse Cohen '11, concentrating in Computer Science, received an honorable mention in the male award category.

Read the full list of those honored.

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The Computing Research Association (CRA) seeks to strengthen research and advanced education in computing and allied fields.

It does this by working to influence policy that impacts computing research, encouraging the development of human resources, contributing to the cohesiveness of the professional community and collecting and disseminatinginformation about the importance and the state of computing research. Each plays an important role in achieving the organizational objectives.