Computer Science

Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, discussed the importance of innovation and the formation of an education system to favor innovation in a speech and dialogue with computer science professor Jaswinder Singh.

Computer science Ph.D. candidates Anirudh Badam, Robert Dockins, Wyatt Lloyd and Chong Wang and master’s degree candidate Nicholas Jones are the first University graduate students to receive the Siebel Scholars award, an award for leading scholars in top computer science and business programs.

Bill Zeller, a fifth-year graduate student in the computer science department, died Wednesday night at age 27 as a result of injuries from a suicide attempt.

Zeller was found in his University apartment by Public Safety officers at about 6 a.m. Sunday, shortly after he attempted to take his own life. Brain damage due to oxygen deprivation left Zeller in a coma at University Medical Center at Princeton until the evening of Jan. 5, when he was removed from life support.

Smartphone applications that cater to Princetonians, such as Fountainhop and Scoop, now have another competitor: MYMapp. MYMapp is an iPhone application created by Matthew Salesi ’11, Michele Capece ’11 and Yu-Han Hsu ’11. The application “grabs” all the events currently listed on Point and runs them through a process that accurately extracts information about each event’s location, Salesi said.

There’s an art and even some science to creating good user interfaces. One of the simplest rules is to enlist potential users as victims and get their frank opinions before the design is frozen.  Our world is full of gadgets and systems like my GPS that have focused on elaborate “features,” apparently at the expense of this basic step.