The prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship was recently awarded to Tyler Daddio. Only 240 scholarships for the 2017-2018 academic year were awarded to U.S. undergraduate sophomores and juniors across the fields of natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering, of which only 14 were awarded to computer science majors. Each satisfied the Goldwater’s criteria of academic excellence, demonstrate research experience and potential, and the desire to earn a Ph.D. in their field. Also vital is the strong support of their faculty mentors. Tyler’s faculty mentor is Professor Ion Mandoiu. Daddio first began working with Dr. Mandoiu in the final months of his senior year of high school, during which he helped write code to connect various bioinformatics tools to a graphical web interface. His research has primarily focused on computational methods for improving cancer vaccine design, notably through the characterization of the T cell receptor. He has since expanded the scope of this project with the aim of creating a three-stage bioinformatics pipeline to aid in the design of personalized cancer vaccines. He was recently selected as a 2017 University Scholar, and plans to complete the development of this pipeline before his graduation. A complete article was featured in UConn Today. Congratulations Tyler and we wish you continued success!
