Zachary Hamilton

Home Institution
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year Participated
2021

Year in School
Undergraduate

REU Faculty Mentor
Craig Zilles

Research Area Interest
Computers and Education

Project Title
Using Machine Learning and NLP to Teach Code Reading

Biography & Research Abstract

Abstract:

Code reading is a fundamental skill in learning computer science, but is difficult and tedious to test students' understanding due to the time required to manually grade the problems. My research team constructed an autograder for code reading problems using Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) in order to enable CS courses to more easily evaluate code reading ability. We aimed to further improve its capabilities using NLP techniques like lemmatization, stemming, and more complex feature representations.

Bio:

I am a rising senior majoring in Computer Science and Linguistics at UIUC. I enjoy learning about the applications for artificial intelligence and natural language processing. I've been a passionate CA for both intro-level CS courses since freshman year, and enjoy playing video games and hiking in my free time. I aspire to use my skillset to lead projects aimed at making learning CS easier and more accessible.