Enterprising exceptional ‘first class’ computing student awarded enhanced honours

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Enterprising computer engineering student Casey Louise Denner was awarded her Enhanced First Class Honours degree at Swansea University’s Summer Degree and Award Congregation on Friday 28 July.

Casey DennerCasey, aged 22 from Port Talbot joined the Computer Science department at Swansea in 2013 on the 4-year MEng computing scheme and excelled both academically and in extra-curricular activities throughout her studies. 

Casey was initially planning to study languages but was drawn to computing through a love of programming for which her department is extremely thankful. 

Casey will graduate with the highest grade-average of her cohort of Masters students. Casey’s third year and fourth year projects were both exceptional pieces of work that highlighted ways that computing can help people living with chronic health problems. 

Her third year project designed and tested a physical monopoly board for people living with visual impairment. The system was controlled by a mobile phone app that could detect what side a rolled die landed on, work out where a player’s token should move, and raise the appropriate square on the monopoly board to move to allowing visually impaired players to move their pieces by touch. 

Casey’s fourth year project looked at the problems in providing entertainment for people living with dementia in care homes. She designed and built a fabric book for them to use that promoted reminiscence therapy - the therapeutic recall of past events and experiences.

In addition to being the top student in her year, Casey has helped to promote the department through a wide range of activities such as acting as a student ambassador sharing her experiences studying with prospective students. Her demonstration of her projects has also shown many potential students that computing skills can be applied far more widely than they might imagine!

Casey also had a part of her final year’s work published in this year’s British Computing Societies Human Computer Interaction Conference. 

Speaking about her time at Swansea University Casey said: “I really enjoyed my time at Swansea University. Even though I knew nothing about computer science when I started, the lecturers were very helpful as were my classmates. The lecturers were also very approachable and it felt more like friend-to-friend conversations as opposed to teacher/student.

“I'd advise all students to make the most of their time off in the summer and get some experience through internships or similar jobs. I did this and it led to me receiving a few job offers before I'd even finished university.

“In September I'm starting work in Admiral in Cardiff where I'm hoping to develop my skills further in multiple areas including security and web application development."