Seeing it through and seeing through it

Matt Horst won a spot in the coveted 2015 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship program for his work in developing a 3D real-time wideband microwave camera that can produce images. Sam O'Keefe/Missouri S&T

Matt Horst won a spot in the coveted 2015 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program for his work in developing a 3-D real-time wideband microwave camera that can produce images. Sam O’Keefe/Missouri S&T

At 7 a.m. on a weekday, many college students are still asleep. Others hit the snooze button and struggle to get out of bed for an 8 a.m. class. But not Matt Horst. He is usually already at work in the Applied Microwave Nondestructive Testing Laboratory (AMNTL) at Missouri S&T.

Horst, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering at S&T, spends most of his time working in the lab running simulations, fabricating circuit boards or reading literature related to his research.

The winner of a coveted spot in the 2015 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Horst is working to develop a 3-D real-time wideband microwave camera that can produce images. [Read more…]

Celebrating ‘110010’ years of computer science

Missouri S&T Computer Science Golden JubileeThe first computer on the Missouri S&T campus — a Librascope General Precision, or LGP-30 — was about the size of two desks. Its memory was nonexistent. It retailed for $47,000, or about $400,000 in today’s dollars.

It was worth the price, too. That first computer sowed the seeds of the computer science program at Missouri S&T, the first of its kind in Missouri and a national leader in the field.

To celebrate, Missouri S&T is kicking off a Golden Jubilee celebration marking 50 years (or 110010 years in binary code) of its computer science degree program, says Pam Leitterman, who earned a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from the university in 1975 and is president of the Academy of Computer Science. The celebration will last through the fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters. [Read more…]