About Us


Shaowei Lin, Nathan Penner, and Carly Geehr are students participating in Stanford University's Sophomore College program, taking the course titled "The Intellectual Excitement of Computer Science" taught by University President John Hennessy and Professor Eric Roberts.

Over the two-week period, the course covered topics such as computer graphics, Turing machines, cryptography, hardware, artificial intelligence, and more. Trips to Google and the computer museum were included in the academic experience, and for fun, Professor Roberts hosted a board game night and tried to teach all of his students how to juggle.

Nathan Penner

Nathan currently plans to major in Computer Science and is considering a minor in Math. Working on this project has also motivated him to explore further the applications of technology to biology and medicine.

Nathan enjoys music and has played clarinet for nine years. At Stanford, he is a member of the Stanford Wind Ensemble, is active in the Peninsula Bible Church college group, and volunteers as a tutor.

Nathan grew up in the greater Seattle area and loves the Puget Sound region where two glacial mountain ranges, the Pacific Ocean, and a rainforest are all within a few hoursí drive. His interests include reading, hiking, and playing ultimate Frisbee.

Shaowei Lin

Shaowei Lin was born in Singapore and grew up loving Jogging, Mathematics, Nature and God. "Every time I go jogging, I find so much mathematical beauty in nature that I find it hard to ignore the existence of God," exclaims Shaowei. Indeed, life would have gone on perfectly and peacefully if Shaowei had not stumbled his way into Stanford. Stanford introduced Shaowei to snow-boarding, smores and see-plus-plus. "Yeah, after I took the introductory C++ programming class, I fell in love... with computer science," he recounts adoringly.

Hence, the class "Intellectual Excitement of Computer Science." Shaowei is thrilled to have gurus Eric Roberts and John Hennessy share their exciting experiences and genuine genius with the class. "They played with punch-cards!" Shaowei notes with bewilderment. Impressed by the rate at which computer technology is developing, Shaowei decided to take up the project on Internet2 with co-SoCo-souls Carly Geehr and Nathan Penner. After the project, he concludes, "Internet2 is definitely the trump card of the future."

Carly Geehr

Carly plans to major in Biomedical Computation with a focus on Simulation. She took this Sophomore College class because she loves computers and wanted to find out more about the "intellectual excitement" associated with them. She was not disappointed.

At Stanford, she writes for the Daily, does graphics for Stanford Biotech Quarterly, is a member of the Tridelta sorority, and does publicity for Stanford Student Biodesign. She is also a former member of the swim team and the lightweight crew team, but is currently rehabilitating shoulder and knee injuries.

Carly hails from Newport Beach, CA (aka "The O.C."), and enjoys peanut butter frozen yogurt, spreading the word about music no one's heard of, working on her web page, leading the forces to Cold Stone for double-stamp Wednesday, reading good books, and hanging out with her friends.