Cornell students take top two prizes in Intel Student Research Contest

Lee

Parker

By Bill Steele

Cornell seniors in the College of Engineering took the top two prizes in the 2003-04 Intel Student Research Contest. Eugene Lee, majoring in computer science, received the first place award of $5,000, and Sara Parker, majoring in materials science, received the second prize of $3,000. The prizes were presented at an Intel facility in Portland, Ore., March 12. The third place prize of $2,000 went to Ankur Kalra of Georgia Tech.

In the Intel competition, undergraduate students nationwide submit research proposals to the company, which selects up to 20 projects for funding. Students work on their projects over the summer and fall in consultation with their faculty advisers and an Intel engineer, and in the spring they are flown to the Intel facility in Oregon to present their results. The three presentations judged best receive cash prizes.

Lee, working under Kavita Bala, Cornell professor of computer science, developed software that speeds the rendering of computer graphics on desktop computers. He also credits postdoctoral researcher Bruce Walter in the Cornell Program of Computer Graphics with assistance on the project. Lee developed an implementation of a graphics technique known as the "edge and point system" for simulating light and shadows that uses the graphics processor on a desktop computer, allowing the desktop machine to perform tasks that formerly required many hours on a supercomputer cluster. According to Bala, the work will help to make high-quality computer graphic images "available to the common man."

Lee, a native of Los Angeles, is an inveterate traveler and sightseer and an accomplished photographer, but most of his spare time is spent on a sort of busman's holiday, since he lists his hobby as "programming." He has worked as a teaching assistant and consultant for both graduate and undergraduate courses. He has spent two summers interning with Microsoft Corp., one in Korea and another in Microsoft's headquarters at Redmond, Wash., and he has not decided whether his future will be in an academic or business career, but he will go to work for Microsoft after graduation.

Parker is a senior in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering and works in the group of Professor George Malliaras. The group has been developing new types of flat-panel displays using organic materials that give off light with very high efficiency and are not subject to the dark spots that appear on current displays. One problem has been that these materials require up to four hours to light up when first activated. Parker studied the effects of an additive which reduces the turn-on time to only one or two minutes. She found that too much of the additive made poor displays, but that there was a happy medium that increased efficiency.

Parker, who grew up in Cleveland, wishes she could travel more, but spends time exploring Ithaca's gorges when not teaching freshman calculus or giving science demonstrations to elementary school students. She is the recipient of a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and a member of Tau Beta Pi, the Materials Research Society, ASM International, and Cornell's Quill and Dagger. After graduation, she is planning to continue her education, working for a Ph.D. in materials science.