Ethan Roday
Murray 1693 Scholar
Hometown
Richmond, VA (Collegiate School)
Why W&M?
William & Mary won me over with its beautiful campus, its great professors, and its collaborative atmosphere. On my three visits to the College, I really got the sense that any student was willing to give and receive help from any classmate at any time. Such a sense of community drew me in like no other college I had visited. Naturally, the benefits of the Murray Scholarship sealed the deal for me.
Majors
Computer Science and Linguistics
What I Did Last Summer
Computational Linguistics research at UPenn
Recent Honors
- Dean's List every semester
- Have been selected several times to represent the department at various Computer Science events (mostly at the Career Center)
- Director of DoubleTake a cappella group
Recent Travel
Boutetort Chamber Singers international tour followed by internship/summer school in Cambridge (summer 2011).
My 1693 Research Project
I created an iPad app that will allow composers to write scores on their tablet devices.
Extracurriculars at W&M
I am heavily involved with the arts community on campus. I sing with the Botetourt Chamber Singers, which is technically a 1-credit class, but the time commitment certainly makes it seem like an extra- curricular! I am also a member of DoubleTake Coed A Cappella along with fellow Murray Scholar Katie Mitchell. I act regularly with Shakespeare in the Dark, a student-run organization that puts on three Shakespeare-related productions every year. I am also a member of the Linguistics Club and the Photography Club.
Research
I first worked with Professor Xipeng Shen in the Computer Science department and focused on the implications of software versioning on optimized computer programs. In other words, some computers automatically collect data about programs and use those data to make the programs faster. When a developer releases a new version of a program, it is useful to know which parts of the existing data are still applicable in the new version and which must be discarded. Then I had the opportunity to work with Ani Nenkova at University of Pennsylvania over the summer looking at the possibility of making automatic quality judgments on newspaper articles.
