Each student will be a part of a collegial research team, including a faculty project supervisor and a graduate student mentor, and will work on a challenging research project. The projects will be designed to match each student’s interest and to maximize the potential for making a contribution during the session.

The projects hosted by the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics (LCSR) and the Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology Engineering Research Center (CISST ERC) are funded by the National Science Foundation. Participating students will receive instruction on technical communication, oral presentation skills, and research ethics to aid in the completion of the required final research report and presentation. The participants may also have an opportunity to be part of a poster session at the end of the program. The students will have the opportunity to tour a local government laboratory and a private company. The students will also have the opportunity to take part in social events.

Reprogramming Education

In high school, Blossom Metevier stuck to meat-and-potato science courses – physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. She didn’t even consider computer science.

“It seemed to be just for the smelly gamers and geeks,” she says. “I took pottery instead.”

Now a sophomore at UMBC – majoring in computer science – Metevier captivated the crowd at a recent briefing on Capitol Hill as she talked about how she ultimately fell into the field. The Congressional Briefing, “Fueling the Future: Celebrating Computer Science Education Week and Computer Science in K-12 Classrooms and Policy,” was sponsored by Computing in the Core, a coalition of corporations, scientific societies, and associations. Metevier joined leaders from industry, education and non-profits in calling on Congress to ensure that more young Americans do more than just stumble upon computer science.

In her junior year of high school, Metevier realized she needed to get serious about figuring out what to study in college. “I couldn’t find anything I was passionate about in high school,” she says.

So, she did some research, learned that computer science involved a fair amount of math – which she liked – and thought it might be useful to learn about computers. So she declared computer science as a major, without having ever taken a class in the field. “When I got to college I found that I was really good at it,” she says. “It’s really about problem solving skills and algorithms, not computers.”

“Looking back,” says Metevier , “I find it very disturbing that no computer science courses are required for (high school) graduation.” And, she says, more women need to be encouraged to give the field a try.

Metevier’s experience isn’t unique. Only 27 percent of U.S. high schools have adopted the Computer Science Teachers Association’s recommended standards for computer science classes. And corporations like Oracle are pushing for computer science to be added to high-school curriculums as a core course.

Marie desJardins, a professor of computer science at UMBC, seconds that approach. “Every student should have a high-quality introduction to computer science that teaches them algorithmic problem solving, how a digital computer operates, and the capabilities and limitations of modern computers,” she says.

While government support may be limited, Oracle spends $2 billion a year on computer science education, and it’s not the only company that recognizes the need. Microsoft recently announced that, to date, it has invested $750 million in its Partners in Learning Project, an international program to train K-12 computing teachers. And Google’s CS4HS program funds universities around the world so that they can offer professional development workshops for high school computer science teachers.

Recent estimates from the U.S. Department of Labor showed that between 2010 and 2020, the country will have more than 1.4 million computing-related job openings. At current college graduation rates, only about 30 percent of those jobs could be filled by American computing graduates. While attracting students, in general, to computer science can be a challenge, attracting female and minority students has proved even more difficult. Women make up only 19 percent of all high school students taking Advanced Placement tests in computer science, according to analysis by the National Center for Women and Information Technology.

Some universities, including UMBC, have launched programs to tackle the pipeline challenge head on. UMBC’s Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) and its new Cyberscholars Program are both designed to attract female and minority students to the computer science field. The programs provide support networks, mentoring and special programming on how to study, manage time well and build a career. All of that is designed to ultimately prepare the students for the working world.

Metevier, for one, is already mapping her next steps: pursuing a master’s in computer science and, ultimately, working in industry. Metevier isn’t just talking about changing computer science. She’s doing it.

(12/18/12)

It’s easy to forget the humble beginnings that great companies start from, and it’s tempting to gloss over the fact that companies, now on the global stage, were once small projects with ugly designs and hacky implementations.

Rarely do people set out with grand visions to create a massively successful company, but rather their ideas evolve gradually. Twitter started out as a podcasting site, Flickr a multiplayer game, Youtube a dating website, Yelp a email recommendations service and PayPal was hell bent on transferring IOUs between Palm Pilots.

Not only did these companies pivot, they also renamed, rebranded and launched with terrible designs.

Twitter

Take, for example, Twitter. Here’s a screenshot of one of their earliest designs before they could afford vowels:

Luckily they then went on to do a redesign, but still a far cry from their current look. The first articles announcing Twitter lauded it as a sort of “group send” SMS application.

Facebook

How about Facebook? Well, they were originally called thefacebook.com (which still resolves), with a simple and ugly design that reminds me of most online forums. They’ve kept that recognizable blue, but my favorite part is the Mark Zuckerburg production tag line.

Youtube

Again, the ugly trend continues, and what at first glance looks like it could be the Youtube we know, reveals upon further inspection search fields to help you find not videos, but people. Specifically, people to date.

It’s interesting to see that their logo survived the pivot, but I guess it’s a fairly generic design and message.

Stripe

While we are by no means comparable to the aforementioned companies, I thought it would be fun to include a look at Stripe’s earlier days.

We first launched as /dev/payments, before re-branding to Stripe. Our first design was equally humble, the management interface was fairly janky, and it took about 45 days to receive your money.

Humble

All of these successful tech companies were simple, humble and ugly when they first launched, but the one thing they all had in common is that they did something simple, and they did it well.

Simple in terms of product mind you, not necessarily technically. Video converting and streaming, for instance, are far from simple technologies, and let’s not even get into the complexities of the payments industry. Technical difficulties though, were in service of product simplicity.

The key is to find a market with a small and easily definable problem to solve, but also a market large enough to accomodate further growth and disruption. Solving a specific problem will get your foot in the door, giving you leverage to throw it right open later down the line.

Being flexible is much more important than knowing the end game. Just come in, build something small, and grow it one step at a time. Everything starts from humble beginnings.

Thanks to Daniel Zarick for the inspiration behind this article.