Nicholas Sharp, CS undergraduate student, achieved the level of Finalist in the prestigious 2015 National Computing Research Association Undergraduate Research Award competition (http://www.cra.org/awards/undergrad-current/). His faculty research mentors are Drs. T.M. Murali (https://bioinformatics.cs.vt.edu/~murali/) and Shane Ross (ESM).
The CRA annual undergrad research competition distinguishes candidates by gender and by the type of their home department: non-Ph.D.-granting vs Ph.D.-granting. Nick was in the competition in the male, Ph.D.-granting department group. There were one Winner, one Runner-up and four Finalists selected in this category, as well as seven Honorable Mentions. The home universities for the top six researchers included: University of Washington, Seattle; Columbia; UNC, Chapel Hill; Mississippi State; Texas A&M, and Virginia Tech. The Department is proud of all of its winners in this competition; between 2010 and 2015 we have had four Honorable Mentions and two Finalists!
