Joel Snyder

[joelsny]

Personal Details

Name: Joel Snyder

Undergrad or MEng? Undergrad

Year in Cornell: Sophomore

Relevant classes: CS 1110, 2110, 2800, 3110, 3780, 4820. CS 3410 and 6110 in progress.

Expertise (languages/frameworks/etc.): I am most comfortable in Java, OCaml, and C, but I am working on learning Rust.

Research

When do you want to do research?

I'm definitely interested in research over the summer, but if there was an opportunity I would also be interested in being involved during the semester too.

What is exciting to you about research?

I'm someone who has always loved learning within classes, but haven't really had any extracurricular experience. I only started coding and learning about computer science when I got to Cornell, but since then I've really enjoyed both learning the theoretical sides of things and also working with code to make fun things. I hope that I can get involved in research to continue/accelerate my learning outside the setting of a classroom, while also developing my skills working on bigger projects than I could independently. Being someone who enjoys the university environment, I've always wanted to go to grad school, but I think it would be important for me to get experience with research before coming to that conclusion, so I hope I can get some guidance on that front after getting involved in some research.

What kind of research do you want to do?

I'm not exactly sure. Of all the classes I've taken here, I've enjoyed CS 3110 the most, with CS 4820 a close second. 3110, and taking 6110 now, make me think I would really like to work in programming languages and using them to solve new problems. I liked the math side of 4820, and being a math major, I think I'd want whatever research I do to involve lots of mathematical reasoning, but I think that can be expected in most fields in CS. I'm still learning though, so I imagine these interests could evolve/change over time.

Background

Was there a paper that particularly excited you?

I liked this paper. I haven't read many papers in CS, but this one gave me some insight into how effective concepts in programming languages could be in solving problems, which I found really exciting and as another reason to want to continue learning about this field.

Which of the current research projects would you be interested in working on and why?
I think all of them look pretty interesting and I think I could learn a lot, but I think Filament looks interesting. I'm still learning the fundamentals of hardware, taking 3410 right now, but I think it's really interesting how type systems can be used to solve problems, and that looks like the motivation for FIlament. For this reason, I also liked Gator, but it looks like that might be less active now.

Anything else you want to tell us about yourself?
Since taking 3110, I've tried to independently learn more about compilers and programming languages. I read the short book Crafting Interpreters, and am now going through Modern Compiler Implementation in ML when I have the time outside of classes.

Attach a CV/Resumé:

resume.pdf