Computer Science

Tennessee Tech computer science senior Makayla Haggerty has a vision – one that would benefit people with impaired vision.

Sara Owens, a sophomore in the same major, aims to simplify a time-consuming verification task for Python programmers.

Both students had the opportunity to indulge their interests through summer research projects as recipients of the university’s Creative Inquiry Summer Experience grant program.

“It has given me real-life work experience that will help me get a job when I graduate,” Haggerty said of the program, which provides monetary assistance up to $4,000, including a $3,500 stipend, for summer internships that help undergraduate students develop research and creative inquiry skills.

Haggerty has been working on authentication and access control of a mobile app that aims to improve navigation for visually impaired people on a college campus, while Owens’ research has involved creating a virtual assistant that will verify the correctness of programs, mitigating the risks of incomplete testing.

Haggerty said she was eager to get involved in the project since the focus aligns with her career ambitions.

“It’s just something that is very interesting to me,” she said. “I want to help those who need the help through technology – primarily the visually impaired because the way they interact with computers is so different, and we don’t think about that a lot of times.”

Professor Denis Ulybyshev, faculty advisor on the research project, and Vadim Kholodilo, undergraduate student in computer science, started the project in July 2021. The app is designed to help visually impaired people access information about rooms on campus.

“A lot of our buildings aren’t properly labeled, and even those that are labeled aren’t always accessible to those who are visually impaired,” Haggerty said.

Ulybyshev added, “It is a great project with significant broader impacts and several challenging tasks from computer science.”

To help continue the project, Ulybyshev applied for a National Science Foundation grant in collaboration with researchers from Tennessee Tech’s Accessible Educational Center; Cybersecurity Education, Research and Outreach Center; and departments of economics, finance and marketing, and mechanical engineering; and from Purdue University.

“If it is funded, we will have more resources to do work and develop our end-user product,” he said. “But even now with limited resources we are making progress, in collaboration with the university’s ITS team, and the CISE grant helped with that.”

Haggerty is pleased with what she has gained from the experience.

“I have learned what is needed to build an app and considerations that need to be taken when making something that is going to be used by the visually impaired,” she said.

For Owens, the seed for her CISE experience was planted when she became interested in some research that Computer Science Department Chair Gerald Gannod, Ph.D., had posted on the Tennessee Tech website. She emailed him to learn more, and Gannod eventually steered her toward her current project. Then she applied for the CISE grant.

“I started this research during the spring semester as an honors class,” Owens said. “I was just really enjoying what I was learning and didn’t want to have to take a break over the summer.”

Her work has consisted of specification construction for Python programs.

“I’m making a tool,” she said. “Methods of mathematically proving the correctness of these programs already exist, but they’re really complex and long, and most programmers don’t want to do it. So, I’m creating a virtual assistant that is going to generate the proof for you to make sure your program is correct and doing what it’s supposed to do.”

Though Owens has encountered roadblocks along the way, she is happy with the technical knowledge she has gained and is determined to work through challenging issues.

“Up until now the teacher has always had the answers in their back pocket,” she said. “Now I ask a question, and Dr. Gannod and I sit down for two hours and struggle through it together.”

Gannod praised Owens’ skills and enthusiasm.

“The research Sara is conducting is extremely advanced and brings together knowledge of formal semantics of programs, dynamic type checking and theorem proving,” he said. “There are few students with the chops needed to pursue this line of inquiry. The research requires more than just following rote methodologies but rather development of new techniques.”

Owens plans to continue her research throughout her time at Tech.

“Overall, this experience has helped me to grow so much as a learner, solidifying in my own mind that I do belong – not only in this major but in this field as well,” she said.

Both Haggerty and Owens are happy with their CISE experience and encourage other computer science students to take advantage of any opportunity to do research.

“Reach out to any professor if you have an idea,” Haggerty said. “You can probably find one who will help you get it off the ground and point you toward grants to fund your research.”

Owens said to “just go for it.”

“It’s about having a curious attitude and a curious outlook – and wanting to learn.”

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