Nov. 16, 2023

Northwest students receive poster awards at regional computing conference

By Georgia McGonigle, communication assistant

Northwest Missouri State University computer science students recently won Best Poster awards at the 2023 Missouri Iowa Nebraska Kansas Women in Computing (MINK WIC) conference in Lenexa, Kansas. 

Addison Rinehart

Left to right are Ashritha Ponugoti, Vedha Sri Gaddam, Rajitha Chintala and Ambica Peruru.

Northwest Missouri State University computer science students recently won Best Poster awards at the 2023 Missouri Iowa Nebraska Kansas Women in Computing (MINK WIC) conference in Lenexa, Kansas. 

Addison Rinehart, a freshman cybersecurity major from Weston, Missouri, received the Undergraduate Best Poster award for her research of AI-generated music and comparisons to music written by humans. Rinehart experimented with AI music programs by prompting them to write instrumental harmonies to a specific melody. She then gave the same melody to a human and instructed them to write instrumental harmonies to draw comparisons. 

Also, Vedha Sri Gaddam, Rajitha Chintala, Ambica Peruru and Ashritha Ponugoti, who are graduate students pursuing master’s degrees in applied computer science, received the Student’s Choice Best Poster award for the presentation of their work to create a web application for the Regional Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. The students designed a website to simplify tasks and organize information for horse show coordinators.

“Winning the undergraduate and student’s choice poster contests reflects our students’ hard work and dedication to their studies,” Dr. Joni Adkins, director of the School of Computer Science and Information Systems, said. “Doing projects like these allows students to develop skills and knowledge beyond the classroom. Their success is a result of their creativity, technical skills and effort as well as mentoring from dedicated faculty.”

Posters are evaluated on visual and oral presentation, relevance of the topic and scientific approach. The students competed against peers from colleges and universities in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska.

MINK WIC is a two-day conference that brings together students, faculty and technology leaders from the four-state area to discuss the role of women in today’s computing and technology fields. Its purpose is to allow young women to explore opportunities in computing and network with other professionals and students. The conference was co-founded in 2011 by Dr. Carol Spradling, a Northwest alumna and retired professor of computer science.