Faculty Highlight

Mike Wittie

Where is your hometown?       Warsaw, Poland.

Mike Wittie, an Associate Professor at MSU

Where did you graduate from high school?     Huntington High School, Huntington, NY

Where did you obtain your degrees?      University of Pennsylvania (BS, MS) and UC Santa Barbara (PhD).

How long have you been at MSU?     10 years

What projects (academic or industry) are you working on?   

My research is in distributed systems. That leads me to pursue projects at the intersection of academia and industry. My students and I have collaborated with Akamai to speed up content
delivery, with Beartooth to develop LoRa personal radios, and with a startup I created with Prof. David Millman and a GSoC MS graduate, Taylor Heinecke, on low cost web3 protocols. My students and I have also collaborated with the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service to create apps for to digitize roadway and ecosystem monitoring.

Are there opportunities for interested students to get involved with your research?    I always encourage students to get involved in independent study courses with me and other faculty. It’s often the best way to explore a research area and enter a funded project.

What classes do you teach?    I teach upper division and graduate classes on networking and distributed systems with an emphasis on implementation projects.

What advice would you have for incoming CS freshman?    Learn to type code on https://typing.io/. And learn to use Vim https://www.vimgolf.com/. In general, commit to picking up new skills and be curious about how things actually work.

What excited you the most about the future of Computer Science?    The combination of decentralized and provable computing enabled by blockchains and secure computing methods. These expand our access to data, know-how, finance, and the physical world, which open amazing possibilities for new, transparent, and decentralized services.

What attracted you to Bozeman, MSU, and/or Montana?    The great outdoors.

What are some interesting hobbies or activities that you like to do outside of work?    Jiu jitsu and tango.

How do you handle stress?    I go to jiu jitsu at Montana MMA. It’s a great way to use my body after a day at the keyboard and a great way to make friends from all walks of life. Sometimes I even get to roll with an MSU students
or other faculty.

In which other professor’s class would you like to enroll, even for a day? Why?   I would love the opportunity to take more math classes. As BA student I skipped many of those in my undergrad and only later learned how useful a strong mathematical background is in Computer Science.

What current trends are baffling to you? Why?    Why do people insist on pushing NFTs to keep track of fungible items?

In which Hogwarts house would you be sorted?    Slytherin.

 

Student Highlights

Faith Nelson

Where did you graduate from high school?     Bozeman High School

Faith Nelson

Where is your hometown?    Bozeman, MT.

Year at MSU? (grad student, senior, junior, etc.)    Senior, graduating this semester.

Why did you choose MSU?    I love the location, and have had quite a few family members attend here.

Why did you choose to major in Computer Science?    It all started in High School, when I initially wanted to go into CS but my friends had told me that I would not like it because it would be too much math. One day I was messing with a robot kit that my brothers had gotten for christmas and was having so much fun. My dad questioned me on if I had thought about going into computer science. I told him that I had but thought there would be too much math and he recommended me to try it anyway. I loved it and that is why I am in computer science.

Advice to a future Computer Science student?  Don’t be afraid to continue on, even when things get hard. Just because something is
hard does not mean that you are bad at it, it only means that you are being grown and
when you get through to the other side you will be astounded at what you were able to
accomplish.

What excites you the most about the future of Computer Science?    I am so excited to see how we learn to help people. For me, I am specifically excited to see the field of User Experience grow, allowing for people of all types and abilities to be able to access the applications that we take for granted daily.

What are your future plans?    I plan to graduate and get a job for a technology company, as a user experience
designer.

What song do you know all the lyrics to?     If I was a Cowboy - Stephanie Quayle

How do you handle stress?    I honestly don’t handle stress well, but in the Spring and Fall, my favorite thing to do
when I am stressed is go to a park and swing on the swingsets. The sunshine definitely helps with the stress and when I come back to work on stuff I am ready to go!

 

Dillon Shaffer

Where did you graduate from high school?     Jamestown High School.

Where is your hometown?     Jamestown, North Dakota.

Year at MSU? (grad student, senior, junior, etc.)     I am an undergraduate freshman at a sophomore credit level.

Dillon Shaffer

Why did you choose to major in Computer Science?    I have been programming for five years now. I started when I was in eighth grade and that hobby became a passion so I decided to pursue it professionally.

Why did you choose MSU?    I chose MSU because of the milder weather from my hometown, the abundance of recreation around the area, and the research opportunities here.

Advice to a future Computer Science student?    Start a personal project, even if it is something small. Pick something you are
interested in and try to think of some way you could emulate or use it in a program. It’s a great way to learn and teach yourself all sorts of things! Just remember, Google is your best friend.

What excites you the most about the future of Computer Science?      Our approach towards quantum computing and automation built on machine learning.

What are your future plans?    I plan to attend Graduate School and get a Master’s Degree. I hope to either start my
own business or become a professor.

What would you do if you were invisible for a day?   I would go around haunting people. I would go around yelling "Boo” and making objects float.

Which superhero would you be and why?    Iron Man or the Flash. I would love to be able to tinker with cutting edge technology even without the superpowers. As for the Flash, it would be awesome to be able to manipulate time and space.