Meet my research Team

Research students

This is simply a letter of gratitude for your enduring support over the past year. I was lucky to have someone with your skillset join the computer science faculty. And with my previous interest in data science, I knew you’d be a good resource. But I could not have imagined the opportunity to work so heavily in research. After conducting what is coming up on a year of research in the subject, I now know it’s what I would like to do long-term. I foresee myself becoming a lifelong developer and advocate of AI. And with all the things I’ve learned and accomplished in the past year, I finally feel like I’m in a good place to do so. This, again, is thanks to you and our collaborative research. I hope that publishing will reflect well on me, so I can attend graduate school for data science after next year.

Dr. Cruz has been an amazing influence for me during my time at Keene State College. She is always friendly, positive, professional, and a helpful lifeline in times of struggle. I have had three classes with Dr. Cruz so far, and she was always fair to everyone, student workloads balanced within reason, and she takes and encourages class feedback. I always felt comfortable in those classes to share my views or understanding on a topic, regardless of being correct or not. Outside of the classroom, I have also been lucky to be involved in two different research grant projects under Dr. Cruz, a virtual assistant bot project and an EEG machine learning project, which covered some foundational bases of understanding for me that I felt were either missing or needed reinforcement from the official Keene State College Software Engineering path. I learned more about web application hosting options, how important naming schemes are, got introduced to cloud computing through AWS, learned how to use Github to manage real software projects with real work flows, and more; All of these are must haves for aspiring computer scientists. Having both these in class experiences and out of class experiences, and taking lessons from each helped give me a much more complete outline for what makes the Computer Science industry tick, and a sneak peek of what working inside of the industry will really be like. Without the help of Dr. Cruz I would be in a much different place today, looking for a way to bridge the larger disconnect between theory and real world application. I’m so thankful for all of my opportunities, and I would highly recommend Dr. Cruz to other aspiring computer scientists if you are looking for a professor to connect with that is willing to go the extra mile to get you the experience you need to succeed.

Timothy Stockton, a Marine Corps veteran, is a computer science transfer student at KSC where he is going for a double major in both Software Design & Engineering and Computational Mathematics. Interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning, he joined Dr. Cruz research team to try his hand in the field of data science. He has experience with web design, Java, graphic design, and is always eager and ready to learn more. In his free time, he produces music and DJs under the name Pandemica