Undergraduate Student Spotlight: Megan Elmore
Megan Elmore is a fourth year Computer Science major from Atlanta, GA. You may have seen her around in the CC as she is involved in CC ambassadors, Upsilon Pi Epsilon and Women@ CC and has served as a CS2110 TA for many semesters. Elmore is also a dedicated researcher and has recently won an award at the 2008 UROC competition. We talked to her about her aspirationsand inspirations as well as advice for current students.
How long have you been interested in Computer Science?
I think I was first interested in Computer Science at the end of middle school. I played a lot of video games as
a kid and I thought it would be cool if I could write my own video games. I tried to teach myself and being one's own teacher usually does not end well, so I took some courses in high school and it opened my eyes that there's more out
there to Computer Science than just video games. The video games brought me; the rest of the field was what kept me.
I know you are an avid researcher. What sort of topics are you currently working on?
So currently here at Tech, I'm working in the networking department on a project called “Pathsplicing” with
Nick Feamster and Murtaza Motiwala. The gist of that is that it's a multipath finding scheme. In a router, they only
know one way to get from Computer X to Computer Y. So every time you want to get from one specific computer to another, it's going to give you the same one. That's pretty good when the internet is available but when there's a
high amount of traffic on one link, you won't be able to talk as quickly or possibly. So what we're trying to do instead is to learn more paths so that there are multiple ways to get somewhere. Then at any hop in the network, you can change paths. So the gist of that is it's like knowing how to drive around Atlanta. There's not any one way; there are multiple ways.
As a female student in CS, do you have any advice to give?
My advice would be to take any opportunity that's presented to you. The problem for women in the field at the moment is that we don't have many role models so it may sometimes seem that there might not be any opportunities. If you want to get involved, try to take academic leaps and you'll hit upon what's interesting to you.
What do you plan to do in the future?
I'm currently applying to graduate school. I definitely want to pursue a PhD and become an academic researcher or a researcher in the industry.
