Many people already know the joy of discovering their ancestors, and now a new app by BYU students takes it to the next level - finding which of your Facebook friends are also family.

The group of computer science students developed a Facebook app called “Relative Finder.”

Most other genealogical Facebook applications are based only on your living family and at best can connect you with third or fourth cousins. The Relative Finder app goes back an average of nine or ten generations because it connects to the genealogical information BYU obtained for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It can even show you your relationship to famous historical figures like the signers of the Declaration of the Independence, apostles and prophets from the early days of the restored church, American presidents and many more.

Computer Science doctoral student Kristine Monteith pulls out her laptop and asks, “What are we feeling like?” With 30 seconds and a click of the mouse, her ThinkPad becomes a regular Beethoven, composing original songs based on any emotion she chooses.

Monteith is a left and right brain kind of person. She came to BYU with a bachelor’s degree in music therapy, a passion for voice, piano and guitar, and is now preparing to defend her doctoral dissertation on her computer program that can generate original music.

Since the beginning of her graduate work, Monteith has been trying to answer a golden question – can machines be creative like humans?

A classic issue in machine learning is developing ways for computers to act like humans. Can computers be so humanlike as to fool us? For Monteith, her question was “Can a computer act like a human in composing music?“

Innovation called “T-Splines” can unify geometric models for engineering & design

Brigham Young University’s Tom Sederberg and his team solved a problem that has troubled the computer-aided design industry since 1980.

As a reward, their start-up has been acquired by a software company that brings in nearly $2 billion in annual revenue. Before the deal, T-Splines had just seven employees – Sederberg’s son and a handful of former students with “an adventuresome streak.” Autodesk, by comparison, has 7,000 employees and clients around the world in the manufacturing, architecture and entertainment industries.

“We initially thought they’d like us to license our technology to them,” said Sederberg, a BYU computer science professor. “They said, ‘No, we want to buy the company.’”

Most computer-aided design programs share a common limitation: Creative designers can make a visually appealing model, but it doesn’t work for engineers who need to analyze how a product would hold up under stress.