Ideas and the fruits of hard work were on display at the School of Informatics and Computing during the Fall Symposium and Research Fair Dec. 4. The second-annual event featured a record-breaking number of teams and students, and it showcased a wide range of work in everything from improved healthcare to building better relationships to more efficient computer programming.
The event was the brainchild of Katie Siek, an Associate Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies for informatics. The first fair launched last year and more than doubled in size this year.
“Last year, we had about 20 teams,” Siek said. “This year we have 55 teams, and there were 125 students participating. We also had 33 judges, some of them from outside the IU community. It’s a great way for the students to showcase what they’ve been working on.”
Among the myriad physical projects were a power strip that monitors and reports to a smartphone app how much electricity is being used by each outlet, a study in human-drone interaction, a medication dispensing aid that hopes to improve the way prescription medication is safely and painlessly distributed to the elderly or people suffering with arthritis, a mobile app to help new mothers cope with the challenges presented by giving birth, and a new system for organizing 3D models of historic sites or artifacts.
There also were computer-based projects, such as a new platform for managing multiple cloud-based services in one simple environment and a system that converts words into statistical vectors that can allow computers to determine a word’s meaning based on past usage.
“I realized that we have a lot of awesome projects being done in classes, but there wasn’t a centralized place for them to be seen,” Siek said. “I wanted to get the students together and give them a chance to present them to the public.”
Martina Barnas, the Director of Research Collaborations at SoIC, said the Research Fair provided a unique opportunity for students to get involved. The Research Fair, a new feature to the symposium this year, gave research groups an opportunity to present a poster and discuss their research with fair attendees, opening the door for more involvement for students.
“We let students know how they can get involved,” Barnas said. “Undergraduate research is very important, and the response has been overwhelming. It’s much bigger than we expected.
Awards were handed out for the best project in both the undergraduate and graduate classes, the best undergraduate independent research project, and a People’s Choice Award which was voted on by the public.
Siek hopes the Fall Symposium and Research Fair will grow and continue to be a valuable resource for students.
“More and more faculty are talking about getting involved,” Siek said. “One of the things we would like to bring about is having a portfolio so when students graduate, they will have a number of projects they have worked on. Each class would have some defining project at the end they could share. That’s our goal.”
Winners of the symposium awards are listed below.
Best Undergraduate Independent Research Project (presented by Associate Dean for Research Andrew Lumsdaine): TIE
“HTRC Visualization”
Andy Patterson, B.S. Computer Science and Mathematics, 2017
Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Computing (UROC) (Inna Kouper) (Undergraduate, Computer Science)
Visualization of publication metadata from the haithitrust database of published works. Finding meaningful trends in large corpus of big data.
“Racket Interpreter for Gradually Typed Racket”
Adam Hurm, B.S. Computer Science, 2019
Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Computing (UROC) (Jeremy Siek) (Undergraduate, Computer Science)
Basic interpreter written for Gradually Typed Racket, an idea by Jeremy Siek. Built to help the team use a central interpreter.
Best UndergraduateClassProject (presented by Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies Esfandiar Haghverdi):
“EventList”
Liam Bolling, B.S. Informatics, 2017; Haixiang Ding, B.S. Informatics and Mathematics, 2016
I399 IOS Development (Mitja Hmeljak) (Undergraduate, Informatics)
An iOS Swift Application that automatically curates and organizes lists of events happening around you based on what your interests, so that you always know what to do next.
Best GraduateClass Project (presented by Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Howard Rosenbaum):
“sensebar”
Kevin Logan, M.S. Human-Computer Interaction/design, 2017; Thanmai Bindi, M.S. Computer Science, 2017
I527: Mobile & Pervasive Computing (Kay Connelly) (Graduate, Computer Science, Informatics)
We are demonstrating a working prototype for a game controller. This game controller uses force sensor input, increasing accessibility for users who have difficulty using traditional game controllers.
People’s Choice Award (presented by Katie Siek):
“Dynamic Dispatch”
HCI4Good
Chetan Govind Bhatia, M.S. Human-Computer Interaction/design, 2017; Brant Hughes, M.S. Human-Computer Interaction/design, 2017; Sarah Ng, M.S. Human-Computer Interaction/design, 2017; Sophia Chinenye Nwankwo, M.S. Human-Computer Interaction/design, 2017
I541 Interaction Design Practice (Marty Siegel) (Graduate, Informatics)
In extreme situations, firefighters rely on their experience and intuition rather than on technology. We have designed a board game that can help firefighters train against these extreme situations and in the process, lower their reliance on intuition.