Jacob Tjaden ’26 Wins Prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Computer science major plans to tackle complex problems in software engineering at Columbia
A Colby senior with a gift for computers and an unflagging work ethic has won a prestigious graduate research fellowship from the National Science Foundation.
Jacob Tjaden ’26, a computer science major who plans to study software engineering at Columbia University, competed against the nation’s top STEM scholars in order to win the fellowship, widely considered the gold standard for early-career STEM students in the United States. He was selected for his potential to make contributions to the field of software engineering.
Tjaden is one of five undergraduate awardees in computer science who come from a liberal arts college, rather than a large research university, and one of three total awardees in software engineering research.
His professors are proud, though not surprised, that Tjaden has been recognized in this way. The fellowship provides significant funding, including a $37,000 annual stipend for three years, and boasts alumni who include more than 50 Nobel laureates.
“Jacob is a very driven student,” said Naser Al Madi, associate professor of computer science. “From even the first course I taught him, he was committed to excellence.”
In his time at Colby, Tjaden has stood out for many reasons, including his interest in research and his intellectual curiosity. He spent two summers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he participated in highly competitive NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates Fellowships, one in software engineering and one in human-computer interaction.
He completed his senior honors thesis as a junior, something that had not been done in the Computer Science Department for more than a decade.
Tjaden has also authored five publications, including a study on machine learning policies that won an international undergraduate computing research competition in Ottawa, Canada, last year.
“Jacob came in from day 1 being motivated,” said Stephanie Taylor, professor and chair of computer science. “He embraces all areas of computer science, has an interest in doing cool things, and a willingness to plan. To me, that’s one of the most exciting things about him. He comes up with a really good idea and then executes it.”
A long-standing interest
Tjaden’s interest in computer science began when he was very young. His father, Brian Tjaden, is a professor of computational biology and computer science at Wellesley College, which helped expose him to computers and technology from an early age. As a high school student, he took a coding and engineering class and had his first experience with programming.
“I loved it and went above and beyond, spending time practicing coding,” Tjaden said. “I knew that I was really interested in computer science. Pursuing it here has been so fun. I’ve really enjoyed the problem-solving and the creativity involved in writing programs. And studying computer science more broadly has been just intellectually stimulating, and I’ve really enjoyed it.”
‘He embraces all areas of computer science, has an interest in doing cool things, and a willingness to plan. To me, that’s one of the most exciting things about him. He comes up with a really good idea and then executes it.’
Stephanie Taylor, Professor and Chair of Computer Science
For Tjaden, Colby was also the right choice because of the opportunities he found here beyond the Computer Science Department. He volunteered as a campus orientation leader and played Ultimate Frisbee on the College’s club team, which competes in tournaments across New England and beyond. He was a captain of the club during his senior year.
“It’s been a really great time and a core part of my college experience,” he said.
Tjaden also minored in both math and economics.
“Econ, especially, is just a different interest of mine that I’ve really enjoyed,” the student said. “That’s totally been part of the liberal arts experience, just getting the opportunity to take different classes and find some that I’m really into. What I like about economics is that it has a highly applied nature, with real-world problems.”
Seeking to make an impact
As an undergraduate, Tjaden has worked on projects that will help distinguish humans from AI, democratize machine learning, and improve transparency in models traditionally viewed as “black boxes,” he said.
When he approached Al Madi to ask whether he would advise him on his honors thesis, with the idea of using software engineering to train students to develop a better coding style, the professor didn’t hesitate.
“The bar is super high for me to take on a student, especially for a thesis,” Al Madi said. “But it was an easy decision with Jacob because I know his technical skills and his work during the summer.”
For his thesis, Tjaden built an online platform to help introductory computer science students improve their code comprehension and debugging skills. In the programming world, poor quality code is known as a “code smell.” Embracing the metaphor, Tjaden named his platform Fishy—a tool designed to help students sniff out and fix errors efficiently. He also compared the platform to an existing code analyzer that’s often used in the industry.
“We found that Fishy far and away helped people improve their code faster,” Tjaden said. “The other thing we measured was whether people learn better from it. We found that learning was pretty equal across the board. So Fishy was better in the moment at helping you fix the code, but learning-wise, it was not necessarily better.”
Through the experience, he learned a great deal and looks forward to building on that knowledge in graduate school. Through the NSF research grant, which funds an individual rather than a specific project, Tjaden will have greater freedom to choose his research direction.
“I think I thrive on, and really enjoy, having the independence and being able to push projects in the direction that I find interesting. I like to ask deeper, difficult questions that don’t have an obvious answer,” he said. “I am also really drawn to the idea of solving tough problems in some way that helps people, or contributes to human knowledge, or pushes what’s possible for technology.”
