TITLE: Good News at the End of a Long Year, v2.0
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 30, 2021  1:56 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 A couple of weeks ago, a former student emailed me after many
 years.  Felix immigrated to the US from the Sudan back in the
 1990s and wound up at my university, where he studied computer
 science.  While in our program, he took a course or two with
 me, and I supervised his undergrad research project.  He
 graduated and got busy with life, and we lost touch.

 He emailed to let me know that he was about to defend his
 Ph.D. dissertation, titled "Efficient Reconstruction and
 Proofreading of Neural Circuits", at Harvard.  After
 graduating from UNI, he programmed at DreamWorks Interactive
 and EA Sports, before going to grad school and working to
 "unpack neuroscience datasets that are almost too massive
 to wrap one's mind around".  He defended his dissertation
 successfully this week.

 Congratulations, Dr. Gonda!

 Felix wrote initially to ask permission to acknowledge me
 in his dissertation and defense.  As I told him, it is
 an honor to be remembered so fondly after so many years.
 People often talk about how teachers affect their students'
 futures in ways that are often hard to see.  This is one
 of those moments for me.  Arriving at the end of what has
 been a challenging semester in the classroom for me,
 Felix's note boosted my spirit and energizes me a bit
 going into the summer.

 If you'd like to learn more about Felix and his research,
 here is
<a href="http://www.felixgonda.com/">
   his personal webpage</a>
 The Harvard School of Engineering also has
<a href="https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2020/11/grad-student-profile-felix-gonda">
   a neat profile of Felix</a>
 that shows you what a neat person he is.
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