GMU's a decent school. So the PhD candidate and his research partner/associate professor didn't perceive that this research would have any broader implications? Hello.
I got an econ degree from Mason (mini Chicago). The econ department was fun, a little ivory tower but fun. I started out as CS and found the department unimpressive, maybe I was just young and not into it, but I didn't meet many hackers there.
Most of the student body was unimpressive. The school is very much wrapped up in the DC/Northern VA environment. Its hard to explain, but I'll try, the really good students dreamed of working for Booz Allen. That's probably the best I can do.
The ecoomics department is probably the best dpt that GMU has. I also went there, but I studied CS. I was a fairly decent student and I met other good students. If you would have stuck and taken the advanced CS classes like AI, Computer Vision, Compiler languages or Operative systems you might have gotten a glimpse of the hackers at GMU. I don't consider myself a hacker, but I do love coding. I never even dreamed of working for Booz Allen, but I don't see anything wrong with that idea either. There were some hackers there though, like the guy who coded and came up with Plasma Pong (it was later shutdown by Atari I think), and I think another guy who wrote RoadBlocks, the math department also had some really smart people. Apart from some Associate professors I think that the CS department has some really outstanding faculty like Sean Luke, Elizabeth White, Zoran Duric and I also heard professor Hamburger was awesome before he retired, I learned a lot from them (actually I never would have learned of hacker news if it wasn't for Professor Luke).
I thought of doing something similar for the global financial system. I'm just not sure how reliable the information would be, or how to go about getting it.
