Tusculum College student Elizabeth Wright will be among the presenters this Friday (March 25) at the Blue Ridge Undergraduate Research Conference.
Wright, a sophomore from Powell, Tenn., majoring in mathematics with a concentration in computer science, will make a presentation about “Secure Programming in Python” during the conference, hosted this year by Maryville College.
Python is a commonly used program language and in her presentation, Wright focuses on ways to make programs written in the language more secure. She is exploring the use of pre-conditions and post-conditions on each function to make the determination if it is functioning properly. She also will be investigating the use of loop invariants, which are logical properties relating to the data that should be true at each repetition of the statements within the program as it loops.
The Blue Ridge Undergraduate Research Conference is designed to encourage undergraduates in colleges in the Appalachian region to conduct research projects by providing a high-quality, low pressure forum for presentations. More than 80 undergraduate students from eight colleges in East Tennessee and Kentucky are expected to attend the 2011 conference. Approximately 60 separate presentations are planned.