Condello, Jacob

Computer Engineering BS '17

Zoom image: Jacob Condello. Data science expertise leads to multiple job offers in WNY. Photo credit: Onion Studio Jacob Condello. Following multiple leads, arriving at data science.

Jacob Condello.  Data science expertise leads to multiple job offers in WNY.  Photo credit: Onion Studio

“Computer engineering can be directly applicable to real problems, and there's a strong job market. ”
Jacob Condello
Computer Engineering BS '17

Published April 3, 2017 This content is archived.

by Christian Miller

While still an undergrad, Jacob Condello traveled to Seattle to attend one of the top international computer science education conferences.

At the 2017 Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (ACM-SIGCSE) technical symposium, Jacob and collaborator Simran Singh showed off their research project, "Building Tools, Gathering Data: Precursors for Assessing Students' Programming Process."

Jacob credits CSE's Certificate in Data Intensive Computing program for his involvement in the project.  Certificates are non-degree-granting programs that enhance our degree programs by conveying deep knowledge in one specific research area.  The department offers several of them at the undergrad and grad levels.

Jacob describes some of the courses that comprise the Certificate in Data Intensive Computing.  "Bina Ramamurthy teaches CSE 487: Data Intensive Computing," he said.  "You also have to take CSE 486: Distributed Systems and do a research project. Biological data science or anything in data science. That's what pointed me to data science. Carl Alphonce teaches using the Eclipse integrated development environment and became interested in collecting Eclipse data."

The goal of the investigation, still in its preliminary phase, is to use programming data to identify struggling student programmers in order to deliver special assistance to them. "The highlight of that project is finding a field I'm interested in, which is data science, and data intensive computing, and then seeking out the faculty to pursue it in more depth than the course offered." He later became a teaching assistant for Bina Ramamurthy, who is "always on the lookout for interesting stuff."

Jacob, a Webster, N.Y. native, is fielding multiple job offers in the Rochester, N.Y. area. His data science expertise, research work, teaching experience, and perfect 4.0 GPA make him an employer's ideal job candidate.

"Identifying the trending fields is important," he said. "I chose UB because of the computer engineering program. Computer engineering provides more depth in electrical engineering and natural sciences. Computer engineering can be directly applicable to real problems, and there's a strong job market."