What is my colleague researching?

This past Saturday, I spent the evening at a small party hosted by my colleague, Dr. Macdonald, at his new pastoral home, about an hour outside the city. During the course of the evening, obviously after exchanging pleasantries and congratulating him on his new domicile, I asked him what he was working on. He smiled cryptically and broke off the conversation, I thought I'd offended him, but yesterday he came into my office and dropped off a piece of paper containing only the following 24x15 grid of letters.

XPMAWWVXIQMXLMFETXPCYOLG
YYUMOVXPMVYMBPWCOAETWXBP
MPMBPQYIWRMWBDCGWMTQBSRC
KBWCRMMCFWCDDDDDIJKSTRAS
XBCWAEDDIGMCDEDWNNSWBEWQ
WFAAAAAWRBWWCBVEEIDMWVWP
MRFAXAWDSMWOBGIICMNFIONB
MEMDLOQHTPEDGGGGAYCLCRPP
XBDPCMRCWHBMHHGCLNBMCGPC
WEHWRCCEBBBBBCMCPBYWAKWO
WACXCUODEBOOAMJWEEWCNAAU
MCTWBWNBQRRACDCDTWDCOCCJ
VBCECMCIXWTEBDHYRANIBAAU
WAMMBCBWNCOCXAEIOUPMICJG
CAAECGDEEGACGDFCCAEBFDBB


What is he trying to tell me?

• You reposted, just to change JI to IJ? Why not just edit the old one? – Rand al'Thor Sep 14 '16 at 14:46
• @randal'thor Oh, crap, I thought self-deletes before answers or votes were actually deletes. I found a spelling mistake in my creation notes, and thought an edit history for that particular change would be a non-minor spoiler. – Sconibulus Sep 14 '16 at 14:51

Researching search algorithms. Credit @Gareth McCaughan

Because:

On the grid we can find the following:
Dijkstra's - referring to Dijkstra's algorithm
Binary - credit @RosieF - referring to the Binary search algorithm
Depth - referring to the Depth-first search algorithm
First - added to depth and breadth to complete the algorithm names.
Grovers - perhaps referring to Grover's algorithm
Fibonacci - referring to the Fibonacci sequence / Fibonacci search technique
Alpha, Beta and Pruning - referring to the Alpha-beta Pruning search algorithm (again diagonally).
Tree - diagonally. Could be added to Binary for Binary-tree search algorithm.
Neighbor appearing twice next to each other - referring to the Nearest neighbor search algorithm ( @Gareth McCaughan and @M Oehm )
Naive - referring to the Naïve String Search, Also mentioned on this wiki-page
Prims - referring to the Prim's algorithm (@M Oehm)

The repeating As, Bs and Ds (sequences of 5 each) could refer to A*, B* and D* search algorithms. The As and Ds also appear on the row above and twice on the row below the sequence, forming a star. - comment from the OP.

Something to help with the word searching: https://wordsearch.lukasjoswiak.com/p/8767172