On March 17, 2012 the College of Sciences and & the College of Engineering put on the SDSU Science & Engineering Sampler. All departments were able to set up their labs so incoming students, young kids and parents could see all the research that is happening on the SDSU campus. Lots of the labs had interactive activities that the kids could take part in. The Computer Science department was well represented by Dr. Marie Roch, Dr. Mahmoud Tarokh, Dr. Kris Stewart and our ACM Student group.
Dr. Marie Roch’s Audio Lab crew opened their doors to visitors to show how computer science could be applied to problems in biology and ecology through their work in bioacoustics: the study of production, reception, and analysis of sounds produced by animals. Visitors learned about the lab’s collaboration with the Whale Acoustics Lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They could listen to sounds produced by whales and dolphins as well as see the first steps of the analysis used for classification performed on their own voices. SDSU graduate students Jonathan Walton and Chris Marsh as well as Scripps analysts Lauren Roche and Sara Kerosky helped Professor Marie Roch guide visitors through the lab.
Dr. Mahmoud Tarokh opened his lab to present the work he has been doing with Intelligent Machines and Robots. Visitors got to see a presentation of an autonomous robotic system following a person and flying robotic helicopters.
Dr. Stewart set up the Game Programming lab to run the video games created by SDSU students in our CS 583 3D Game Programming class. Children along with their parents got to sit at the computers and play the games.
A big thanks to our ACM Student Group for being on hand to answer questions and help show visitors to the open labs!
