Alannah Oleson was selected as a finalist for the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. The award recognizes undergraduates who have made significant contributions to research.

For the past three years Oleson has been working with Margaret Burnett, Distinguished Professor of computer science in the College of Engineering, who studies human computer interaction. Oleson has worked on two different areas of research with Burnett: end-user programming and gender-inclusive software.

Oleson’s involvement has been extensive, including helping to plan and program the studies, debug procedures, collect and analyze data, and write up the results. She is co-author on six research papers and is one of the primary co-authors of a document describing the foundations of GenderMag, which is a software inspection process for programmers to uncover gender inclusiveness issues in software.

In the nomination letter for the CRA award Burnett wrote of Oleson: “In my 25 years as a faculty member, she is one of the very best undergraduate students I have seen.”

Last year, Oleson was one of 10 women to win the Adobe Research Women-in-Technology Scholarship.