TITLE: Former Students Crossing the Divide
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: July 11, 2009 10:57 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
What a summer for UNI CS alumni in academia!  In the
last few weeks,
<A HREF="http://www.cs.umn.edu/~drenner/">
   Andrew Drenner</A>
and
<A HREF="http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~rsd/">
   Ryan Dixon</A>
both defended their Ph.D. dissertations, at the
University of Minnesota and UC-Santa Barbara,
respectively.  Currently Andrew is currently working
with a robotics start-up spun off from his research
lab, and Ryan is enjoying a short break before
starting full-time at Apple next month.

I had the great fortune to work with Andrew and Ryan
throughout their undergraduate years, in several
courses and projects each.  Some students are different
from the rest, and these guys distinguished themselves
immediately not only by their creativity and diligence
but also by their tremendous curiosity.  When a person
with deep curiosity also has the desire to work hard to
find answers, stand back.  It is neat to see them both
expanding what we know about topics they were working
on as undergrads.  Indeed, Ryan's project at Apple is
very much in the spirit of his undergrad research
project, which I was honored to supervise.

Congratulations, gentlemen!  Many of your friends and
family may think that this means you are no longer
students.  But you are really joining a new fraternity
of students.  We are honored to have you among us.
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