Name: Justin Stern '04
Hometown: Bedford, Massachusetts

Durham , N.H. – Justin Stern is no stranger to success or the honor and responsibility that come with it. Still, Stern, who earned his B.S. from UNH in Computer Science (CS) last May, was taken by surprise when he was named the recipient of the UNH Hood Achievement Award in spring 2004.

As the winner of this prestigious award, Stern was deemed the senior man at UNH who showed “the greatest promise through character, leadership and usefulness to humanity” by the UNH Student Awards Committee.

“The most exciting thing was just receiving (the award),” said Stern. “Being the only male student to be recognized was incredible. I couldn’t believe it.”

Stern, who held a nearly-perfect 3.92 GPA as a senior, attributed his achievement, in part, to the supportive faculty within the CS department.

“The CS Faculty was so helpful if you were having trouble with anything,” said Stern. “That was definitely a factor in my high GPA – it wasn’t that I knew everything already, but that the professors were willing to sit down and talk things through with me.”

This is the second year in a row, and the third year out of six, that a Computer Science student has been awarded the Hood Achievement Prize. Joel Daniels won in 2003. Anthony Scavone won in 1999.

“The message is that we have the kinds of students in our program who are able to come into our department, blossom in that environment and do the kinds of things that garner this award,” said Phil Hatcher , chair of the UNH Department of Computer Science.

Hatcher, along with Tom Kocher, co-director of the Hubbard Center for Genome Studies (HCGS), nominated Stern for the award. Both complimented his exemplary academic success and work in the HCGS.

“Justin has become an essential resource within the center, and is responsible for developing and maintaining many of the basic software tools used in the center,” Kocher said in the letter of nomination he wrote for Stern. “In addition, he has been a key player in three major projects, each of which will result in a publication.”

At the Hubbard Center Stern worked on, among other projects, bioinformatic systems for comparative genome analysis.

“Many up and coming genomes do not yet have a genome sequence, but do have extensive linkage maps, EST resources and/or BAC fingerprint databases. There is much to be gained if these preliminary maps can be related to the sequence scaffolds of related species that have been subject to whole genome shotgun,” said Kocher. “Currently, available software does not meet this need.”

Kocher spoke of how, as a student, Stern also organized the center’s data in a series of databases, and then built a prototype viewer for making comparisons among genetic linkage maps.

“This tool has already been a tremendous help to my research program and Justin will be the first author on a paper describing this work,” said Kocher.

Stern began working at the HCGS as a sophomore. Though he said the type of work he did there was tough, he likened the experience to a second education of sorts.

“Since working there, I’ve learned a lot about relational databases; I learned a new program language called PHP; I learned how to program dynamic web pages, create dynamic images, and learned to communicate with biologists,” Stern said.

In addition to working at the HCGS, Stern held jobs as an undergraduate at the Nuclear Physics Laboratory; and at the InterOperability Laboratory, where he tested fibre channel network devices for hardware and software faults.

The Bedford , Massachusetts native also spent a semester abroad in London as an undergrad, an experience that rounded out his technical education. Through this UNH study abroad program, Stern took four liberal arts courses – a choice Hatcher, deemed noteworthy.

“Justin is very focused in his pursuit of his career goals, but he still maintains a broad view of what a university has to offer,” said Hatcher. “This broadmindedness is all too rare in technically-oriented students, but I believe it is the single best predictor of a future leader. Leaders need to be able to see the big picture and Justin has the necessary broad vision.

Upon graduation, Stern was hired in a full-time position working at the HCGS as a bioinformatics assistant. His plan is to continue his career in the bioinformatics sector of the computer science field and possibly pursue graduate study.

In Stern’s mind, his experiences at UNH have more than prepared him to pursue these future goals.

“It’s amazing how much you can learn here if you apply yourself,” said Stern. “By my senior year I was able to take classes where I could write my own programming language, starting from scratch. My freshman and sophomore year, the thought of being able to do that was beyond me.”

- Rachel Purnell, CS Department Staff