Featured Scholar:
John Wernicke
2004 - 2005 University Scholar
Mentor: Alan George
College of Engineering
When he first entered college four years ago, John Wernicke initially had a tough time picking a major. Intrigued by math and science, he found it hard to settle on just one major. Instead, he picked two.
“I narrowed it down to physics, computer engineering and mathematics,” he says. “Majoring in any one of these makes the others much easier, so I decided to major in both computer engineering and mathematics. I found the interconnections between my two majors to be fascinating.”
Before he had even taken a networks class, John started volunteering in the High-Performance Computing and Simulation Research Lab, under the supervision of Computer Engineering Professor Alan George. In time, John turned his work into a University Scholars Program project on high-performance embedded networks, and Dr. George agreed to serve as his mentor.
“My USP project is a simulative analysis of the capabilities of current switching devices to provide reliable service for specific applications in embedded systems, such as aircraft,” John says. “More simply, I have developed models of small networks and analyzed the effect of providing more important traffic with more network resources.”
The first phase of his project focused on experimentally characterizing the performance of real hardware switches. This experimental information was then used in the second phase to make high-level simulative models as accurate as possible. Using these models, John says he could create much larger networks than was experimentally feasible in order to study real-world problems in a cheaper, faster manner.
“The main application of this project is embedded military networks where reliable service for certain traffic streams can be crucial,” he says. “For example, if the pilot of an aircraft is browsing Google news when a missile is fired at his or her aircraft, it would be very important for the incoming missile warning to be given faster service.”
John graduated from UF in spring 2005 and, after taking some time off to travel the US, he is now applying for computer engineering jobs in New York and Washington, DC. While at UF, he was involved in several engineering honors organizations, including Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu. He also was active in the film society at UF, Florida Undergraduate Film. He says the USP was one of the best experiences of his time at UF.
“Aside from all the technical knowledge, I gained quite a bit of experience in problem solving,” he says. “Anyone who has done research before knows how many unanticipated problems plague even the simplest of studies. Learning how to deal with those problems and avoid them in future projects is invaluable.”
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