Roger Burtonpatel

About Roger

Roger Burtonpatel is a senior at Tufts University with a passion for languages: computational, musical, and spoken. He is pursuing a double major in computer science and music with a minor in Portuguese. In his computer science work, his research focus is on Programming Languages, and he has enjoyed using his programming skills at diverse internships, including as a developer at MathWorks and Bastion Zero and as a research assistant at Northeastern University’s Music and MIND Lab and QMUL’s Music Computation Lab. He is currently writing a Senior Honors Thesis in Programming Languages at Tufts with Dr. Norman Ramsey.
Roger Burtonpatel is a senior at Tufts University with a passion for languages: computational, musical, and spoken. He is pursuing a double major in computer science and music with a minor in Portuguese. In his computer science work, his research focus is on Programming Languages, and he has enjoyed using his programming skills at diverse internships, including as a developer at MathWorks and Bastion Zero and as a research assistant at Northeastern University’s Music and MIND Lab and QMUL’s Music Computation Lab. He is currently writing a Senior Honors Thesis in Programming Languages at Tufts with Dr. Norman Ramsey.
Roger also engages with computer science as a tool for education and social good. Within Tufts’ computer science department, he started TA’ing as a sophomore and now leads other TAs as a Teaching Fellow and was asked by faculty to instruct the department’s TA training course. As a Tech Lead for JumboCode, Tufts’ volunteer service-oriented programming club, he guides developers in using their engineering abilities to benefit local non-profits. He is leading the team building an app for the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, one of Boston’s foremost organizations for preserving green spaces. In recruiting developers, he ensured that the team’s new hires were diverse, with over half women. He also developed the app for Potencia, a language-exchange program founded by Tufts alumni, and used his knowledge of Portuguese and French to gather and integrate feedback from local community members to make the app more accessible.
As a Tufts 1+4 and Global Citizen Year Fellow, Roger worked as a volunteer librarian in Brazil, where he became fluent in Portuguese and led an effort in gathering donations and pooling funds to prevent the library from closing. While there, he also taught free English lessons to adults through the library and drummed in several Brazilian musical ensembles, including an escola de samba and a bloco de maracatu. Back at Tufts, Roger used his position as a TA for Portuguese to work as an ally of the department at Tufts when the university proposed cutting the program. By bringing in the support of Medford’s vibrant Brazilian community, he led a successful effort to keep Portuguese studies at Tufts and has since been involved in establishing it as a core part of the new Romance Language Program. Roger’s passion for music has led him into a wide variety of ensembles at Tufts, including the New Music Ensemble, the Electronic Ensemble, and the Tufts Gamelan. In his free time, he enjoys playing ping-pong, hiking, and trying new recipes. Roger is set to graduate with a BA from Tufts University in May 2024.