2019-07-24 Science Posse CS Workshop

Learning Objectives -- by the end of the lesson you will be able to

  • describe the Julia programming language and what it can be used for

  • write Julia programs to do scientific calculations and produce graphs using Juliabox

  • download and install the blender 3d graphics package

  • modify and run interactive 3d games using blender

  • ask questions about the kind of research I do in computer science

  • describe the range of Computer Science courses available at Brandeis and the kinds of careers Brandeis students with CS majors follow

Activity -- What's in a name

We go around the room and state our full name, where it comes from (if we know), and anything else interesting about our name. We also name 2 possible majors we might consider while at Brandeis.

Activity -- Lab: learning Julia

We spend about an hour going through the Juliabox tutorial while learning about programming languages, especially for scientific computing.

Activity -- Lab: 3D Graphics and Game Design

We download blender from this site:

http://www.blender.org

and then we look at some interactive games at this site

https://sites.google.com/a/brandeis.edu/3d-game-design/home

which is linked from my page

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~tim

We also look at using blender to create new objects

Activity -- Lecture: Overview of my research

We discuss a few of my current research projects:

described on this page:

Current Research of Prof. Tim Hickey

Activity -- Lecture: Computer Science Opportunities at Brandeis

As a Brandeis student you can take a few courses in Computer Science that interest you, or get a minor (5 courses) or a BA (10 courses) or a BS (13 courses)

Some courses that I teach that don't require prerequisites are

    • CS10a: Introduction to Problem Solving in Python (Fall19 for those with no programming experience)

    • CS12b: Advanced Java Programming (Fall19 for those with some programming experience)

    • CS164a: Introduction to 3D Animation (Fall 2020?)

There is another graphics course I teach that requires CS11a:

    • CS155b: Computer Graphics website (next class Fall 2021??)

You can also participate in the JBS Summer Program where you get 3 CS elective course credits and learn how to build professional applications in teams. The past few years we've been doing Voice, Web, and Mobile apps.

Students can get involved in research (like Mercedes and Venus) and can also take independent studies

or Senior Honors Research. There are many clubs, hackathons, programming contests, etc. You can also become a Teaching Assistant in courses you have taken or can participate in the Girls Who Code project at Waltham High School

There are also summer internships (and we have a Computer Science Career and Internship Fair every October), and summer research programs (e.g. NSF REU).