As a senior, Geoff Baum ’10 discovered himself while discovering new galaxies. A computer science major and music minor, Baum spent his final year at St. Lawrence University working closely with Prof. Richard Sharp of the computer science department, researching galactic formation.

During his junior year, Baum was invited to attend the ALFALFA Project Conference in Puerto Rico in January 2009 as a member of the undergraduate workshop team. ALFALFA (“Arecibo Legacy Fast Arecibo L-Band Seed Array” is a new instrument that allows the telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, the world’s largest and most sensitive single-dish radio telescope, to survey galaxies up to 800 million light years away.

After hearing a presentation and viewing the Arecibo telescope, Baum was inspired to focus his senior research on how to use computer science applications in studying galaxies and their formation. His project “confronted a computationally intense problem,” he says, in which he successfully created computer simulations that allowed him to predict the spacial locations of gravitational bodies in space. Baum returned to the ALFALFA Project Conference in January 2010 to present his senior research project findings to the entire workshop of his peers and professors.

In addition to computer science, Baum is interested in jazz and blues music, and plays the guitar. He is a member of the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at St. Lawrence, and enjoys running and hockey. For the past two years, Baum has also been a web and applications intern programmer at St. Lawrence University’s Information Technology Center.

After graduation, Baum plans to become a software engineer or computer applications developer. He intends to continue his computer science studies in graduate school.
                                                                                   
--Margaret Quackenbush ’10