Who am I?

My name is Ledah Casburn, and I'm a spaz.  hehe... just kidding.  No really I'm a Computer Science and Mathematics double major at Mills College.  I am just about to start my senior year there.  In case you're wondering, Mills College is a small liberal arts college for women located in Oakland, California.  Mills College has been educating strong and powerful women since 1852.
 
 

I love the water.  I love being around it and splashing in it.  If you're looking for me and can't seem to find me I'm probably at the pool.  I'm a lifeguard and captain of the swim team.  Just this last winter, the team spent a little over a week training in Hawaii.  We all had such a great time (even the double practices didn't seem that bad in Hawaii!) that we didn't want to come back.  I am still looking for excuses (and money) to go back there again.  Hawaii is such a beautiful place (not to mention how tasty the pineapple was!  mmmm).
 
 

 

Mills College Swim Team 2001-2002
I'm in the back row, second in from the right.

Last summer I participated in SUMSRI, a mathematics REU, at Miami University (it's not in Florida, it's in Ohio).  My friend Tuyet-Linh and I wrote a paper titled "The Orthogonal Josephus Problem."  You're more than welcome to read it (if not the whole thing, than at least the abstract and introduction).  The summer spent in Oxford was great, in that it made me realize that graduate school in mathematics wasn't the direction that I wanted to head.  It made me realize that I liked computer science better and perhaps that's what I should be looking into.

So, here I am now, living in Corvallis with my wonderful roommate Laura and her two cats.  I've just begun a journey with the help of my mentor, Dr. Burnett, and her students into the depths of computer science research.  It's been great so far.  I've been keeping  busy reading research papers, attending meetings, designing an experiment, and it's only the first week!   I can just image how full these 10 weeks will be, but I'm looking forward to exploring it all.  If you're interested in the research I'm involved in, please click here.