College student and Columbia Basin College graduate Victoria Smith applied her skills to a variety of tasks in the LIGO Hanford electronics lab over the summer of 2006, helping the Observatory maintain and improve several aspects of its computing and electronics infrastructure. On the computing side, Victoria implemented several changes to a family of computer scripts that run information management processes. In the electronics domain, her list ranged from low-tech ("The lab needs to be cleaned!") upwards, including cabling and the soldering of printed circuit boards.

Victoria came to LIGO in the midst of her studies at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA. Readers might recall that Redmond is the home of a certain well-known software firm. Victoria plans to graduate from DigiPen with a B.S. degree in Realtime Interactive Simulations with minors in Physics and Mathematics. She hopes to secure a niche in the gaming/simulations industry following the completion of her studies.

In the programming division of DigiPen, Victoria is one of seven females in a population of 205 students. She has made herself at home in this gender-tilted environment and hopes that she will be able to encourage more young women to pursue their interests in computing as she moves into a career. Coursework at DigiPen has given her programming experience in C++, C# ("C Sharp," a variant of C++) and Visual Basic. Labor at LIGO has added several scripting languages to her portfolio.