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SMITH SOPHOMORE
JOHN SILBERHOLZ (RIGHT) PURSUES HIS PASSION FOR
RESEARCH WITH BRUCE GOLDEN, FRANCE MERRICK CHAIR IN
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE. |
Last August, Smith School sophomore John Silberholz
traveled to Salerno, Italy, but not to bask in the warm
Mediterranean sunshine. Silberholz was there to work,
writing and testing computer code, sometimes for 12 hours a
day. As Silberholz labored in Italy, he got to rub
elbows—literally—with three top Italian scholars from the
University of Salerno and the University of Rome. For the
still-teenage Silberholz, it was a uniquely rewarding
experience made possible by his own abundant talent, the
interest of a Smith professor, and a financial hand from the
Smith School.
The Smith School has enormously talented undergraduates,
but Silberholz stands out even among this elite group. He
turned down MIT and Washington University to attend
Maryland—mostly because he wanted a chance to work with and
take classes from Bruce Golden, the France-Merrick Chair in
Management Science.
Golden taught Silberholz’s father while the latter was
studying for his masters’ degree 20 years ago. So the elder
Silberholz called his old professor, who has a reputation
for being easily accessible to current and former students,
for advice when it became clear his son had a gift for math.
The professor took an interest in the younger Silberholz,
mentoring him through a prestigious competition for high
school juniors before he even started at Smith, and
encouraging him to pursue research-related independent study
once he got here. Golden even gave Silberholz the
opportunity to take a first-year doctoral course. “I treat
him very much as I do my PhD students,” says Golden.
Later, Golden helped Silberholz present his research
results to a major conference for operations research
researchers and practitioners, a trip that Silberholz calls
“one of the most enriching experiences of my academic
career.”
Of course, that was before he got to go to Italy. Here’s
how that happened: Golden was collaborating with Italian
colleagues on an obscure routing problem that affects
telecommunications networks. A perfect solution to the
problem is so time-intensive, even with modern computing
power, as to make it impracticable. So instead of coming up
with a perfect solution, Golden is developing a model that
uses genetic algorithms to approximate a very good solution
in minutes instead of weeks.
“John worked with me on the project and was very familiar
with it, so when I needed someone to physically be there, it
seemed like a good idea to send John to Italy,” says Golden.
The Smith School and Golden paid for Silberholz’s travel and
expenses, and while Golden got the benefit of Silberholz’s
talent for his research project, Silberholz received
something even more valuable: an irreplaceable
out-of-the-classroom experience.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to give great
students like John co-curricular activities that deepen and
enrich their academic experience,” says Pat Cleveland,
associate dean of undergraduate studies. “We are doing this
for many other students through the
Undergraduate Fellows
Program, which offers a wide range of extracurricular
enrichment activities, from global field study trips to
factory tours to internships.”
For students like Silberholz, working with some of the
world’s best scholars has both tangible and intangible
benefits. There aren’t many college sophomores who have had
not one, not two, but three research papers published in a
peer-reviewed academic journal. But there is also the
invaluable intellectual stimulation that comes from working
with brilliant people on interesting problems.
And it is the fact that these problems have real
significance that is important to Silberholz. “I really love
getting to apply these models to the real world. I like
starting with a real-world problem that you can solve with
computer science and math, knowing that your abstract
solution will be used in the real world. That’s very
exciting,” says Silberholz. |
