Dr Michael Walsh and ODCSSS scholar Joel Seligstein using Diamondtouch based tissue micro array collaborative visualisation. Image by Dr Aaron Quigley.
A summer school organised by UCD’s School of Computer Science & Informatics and DCU’s School of Computing is providing computer science and engineering undergraduates with an opportunity to develop research skills and establish industry links.
The Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School (ODCSSS) has offered 18 exceptional undergraduate students the chance to contribute to exciting research projects at leading research facilities and inspire them to go on to undertake research careers.
The theme for ODCSSS 2009 is ‘Technologies for bridging the digital-physical divide: sensing the environment’ and each student is assigned to a project with a faculty member and mentor, enabling them to experience research in this field.
Students will also participate in industry and other site visits. The programme includes talks from IBM Extreme Blue Team and Intel, a site visit to Microsoft and a walk through the anthropological aspect of research currently being carried out in the TRIL (Technology Research for Independent Living) centre.
Later this month, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof Patrick Cunningham, will address ODCSSS as part of the group’s mid-term research day.
‘This kind of experience takes students out of the academic bubble and condenses into 12 weeks the know-how of collaboration with industry’, said Dr Aaron Quigley, co-director of ODCSSS.
Now in its fourth year, 60 students have passed through the programme to date. Some of the more successful projects have been continued by researchers in the host institutions and two of last year’s ODCSSS students were credited in journal publications.
