Jonathan Rueffer
Science Editor
On Tuesday, April 21, the computer science department hosted its first Computer Science Thesis Jam. The event, held in Taylor Hall, brought together students and faculty for a rapid-fire senior Independent Study (I.S.) presentation competition.
Participating seniors were given a strict three-minute limit to present their projects. After everyone presented, underclassmen ranked their top three presentations, and the three seniors with the most votes received $50 prizes. The competition concluded with pizza provided to everyone who attended.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Alex Nord organized the event, saying it was inspired by similar competitions at other institutions, where Ph.D. students present their dissertation research in just a few minutes. The goal was to celebrate seniors’ work in a way that was both fun and accessible for a broader audience.
The three-minute time constraint shifted the focus away from technical depth and toward clarity and engagement, encouraging presenters to reframe year-long research projects into compelling summaries. Chris Vann ’26, whose I.S. incorporated human-centered design and cloud architecture into a collaborative storyboarding platform, said the format was both challenging and rewarding.
“I really enjoyed sharing my work in this setting. The three-minute time constraint was definitely stressful and required me to cut out a lot of information. [However,] being able to see everyone condense their year-long projects into a three-minute explanation was really entertaining,” said Vann.
This sentiment was shared by Aditi Jha ’26, one of the competition’s winners. Jha’s I.S. focused on detecting AI-generated text through a lens of interpretability (i.e., understanding why and how AI writing differs from human writing).
“Sharing my work in that setting was really fun and refreshing. It felt very different from a traditional academic presentation because the focus was on connection and clarity rather than technical depth,” Jha said. Jha added that the fast-paced format created an energetic atmosphere, with presenters finding creative ways to engage the audience.
Nord emphasized that events like this build a sense of community within the department while giving underclassmen a clearer understanding of the Independent Study process.
“They create a space where our seniors can be celebrated for what they’ve achieved at the same time as our juniors and sophomores can start to get a sense of both the scale of challenge that they can expect to face with their own I.S. projects and the ways in which the skills they’ve developed position them to succeed when facing those challenges,” Nord said.
Given the event’s success, the department plans to continue hosting the competition in future years.
Come support computer science majors at the I.S. Symposium on Friday, May 1. The full schedule of events can be found at https://wooster.edu/symposium-2026/.
