UIS Computer Science student among winners in international contest

Tejesh Morla (left), a graduate student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Springfield, is among the recent winners in the MySQL and GlassFish Contest sponsored by SUN MicroSystems.

Morla won second place in the General Students category of the contest, which challenged participants to create a web application using MySQL and Glassfish along with Java. His winning project was a basic web application that responds to customers' needs to register on a site to place and view orders, as well as administrators' needs to view and list all registered customers. He then created an in-depth blog entry that detailed the steps he took to develop his application and how he used MySQL and GlassFish in the process. Second-place winners in each contest category received $250.

Morla said he first heard about the global contest through an e-mail sent by UIS Computer Science Department chair Dr. Ted Mims, adding, "One of my friends always says there should be something in your resume that sets you apart from the others, so I thought I should participate to get some experience."

He said that the project took a lot of time and research. "At one point, I thought I would never make it," he said. “But I am very excited and can't believe that I happened to win."

UIS' graduate program in Computer Science is oriented toward students interested in the design, analysis, and implementation of software programs. Graduate students must complete a comprehensive closure exercise to demonstrate the ability to formulate, investigate, and analyze a problem and to report results in writing and orally.

Founded in 1982, Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services.

For more information, contact Mims at 206-7326.