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For decades, scientists and engineers have imagined ways to improve life with technology.
Today, computers are an integral part of our world,
influencing the way we listen to music, communicate, take photos, and use information.
As computers become more pervasive, the field of computer science expands.
Computer scientists don't just sit behind keyboards programming the latest computer games
they're in labs, offices and classrooms, working in nature and around the world,
making discoveries and creating new technology.
Meet a few of the diverse UW students and faculty who have made computer science their career.
I am a programmer in a Proteomics lab.
So we study proteins using a technology called mass spectrometry
and what we measure with a mass spectrometer are proteins. So.
one of the things that we do in our lab, is we develop tools
for looking at cells and understanding what's happening within an organism at the cellular level.
The human genome project is looking at one particular aspect of a cell which is the genes,
and we're looking at another aspect which are the proteins in the cell
which really control all the functions that happen.
Proteins are essential to everything, everything's about proteins, we like to think so at least.
I like working in a group and being able to create tools that the biologists can use and I get immediate feedback too,
like, oh this is great, it's really helping, or this doesn't work at all, why not?
I like working on puzzles.
An Instrument captures a piece of data and we have to look at the measurements
that it's made and sort of work backwards to figure out what the protein was.
What I like is using them as a tool to answer biological questions and that's.
that's the part that I'm really excited about.
is being able to just analyze so much more data in a more powerful way than you can by hand.
I think really in any branch of science, computers are just essential now
and you can really set yourself apart as a valuable scientist and researcher
by having more computational knowledge, beyond just you know,
being able to turn on a computer and use sort of basic applications,
if you have some knowledge of how to solve problems, essentially, the fancy word for it is algorithms,
but being able to look at a problem and come up with a computer solution
is a really valuable skill in any branch of science.
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My name is Carl Hartung and I'm a computer engineer.
I did an undergrad degree at the University of Washington
and I have a master's in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
I was working with a group doing sensor network research
and people at the University of Montana wanted someone from our group to go and work with them for the summer,
and I raised my hand and ended up in Montana.
So the project I'm working on is called Fireworks Net
and what it is, is we take sensors, we put them around a forest fire
to sense information and they send that information back to us.
And knowing that, it helps them better predict which way the fire is going to go,
how it's going to behave, and that leads to a safer environment for the firefighters.
This is the sensor package that we developed to measure weather conditions and it attaches.
What's really nice about it is we get to go outdoors and we're actually working out in the woods
putting these sensors out in the woods, so it's not, you know sitting behind the desk.
I got to fly in a helicopter a couple times while we were doing this to find out what it was that they needed
and what they wanted and then I could build those systems for them.
The other thing is I had to be trained, I had to actually go through fire training to do this job,
so I had to go through all the basic fire training and become certified as a firefighter.
We actually deployed the system on a complex of fires in Idaho
and once it was out we were able to get all the information about the fire
and then the next day the fire behavior analysts were able to use it in the briefing
in order to let the firefighters know what was going to happen out on the fire today and what to expect the fire to do.
In the future they want to attach these sensors to people actually and not just throw them out in the woods
and also they'll be able to determine where people are in the fire
so that if someone gets lost they'll be able to help them get out of the fire environment.
Computer science isn't just sitting behind a desk all day, you can get out there
and you can really make something that can make a difference.
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My lab is called neurobotics
and really the idea is to understand how the human brain can control things like this.
We think this is so easy to do, so we want to understand how this can be done.
So what we're trying to do with this is to build anatomically correct prosthetic system
which could replace any part of the missing limb.
A lot of hand surgeons want to buy this system now because they can use this as a preoperative planning tool.
Motion capture is basically you know, really capturing what's going on,
physiological, or things that you can see.
You're going and grabbing for a cup, you know that you're bending your joints to do it,
but we don't really get to have the data about which joints are bent by how many degrees
unless we put markers or sensors on the fingers and then really capture that.
We can at least understand what's different about the healthy movement and the not so healthy movement
and then try to augment that difference with robotic or computer systems.
And people might just imagine this field to be you know, going and working for computer science industry
but no, no, computer scientists can go work in a hospital, work alongside with doctors, become a doctor, become a lawyer.
You know it's really an enabling field which has many doors in the future to open.
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I'm a computer science graduate student at the University of Washington.
I work on tactile graphics which is the process of translating images from textbooks into a tactile format
so that blind people can feel them and understand what the image is trying to say.
And we're trying to figure out smart ways to do that.
Also when we print out images
we use eight and a half by eleven paper when we're you know, printing out things on our normal printers.
For blind people if they have to feel the whole image they need to have a bigger space
because it's hard to feel an image and figure out what's going on.
You need more of a space so it can spread out, you can get more detail.
My project specifically helps out many blind students, like children up until college or after college
by giving them access to textbooks and I really like the idea of making education more accessible.
We asked two blind people that we work with to get verification on the success of our images.
I'll come in to get his feedback on certain images I've produced.
I can't tell what makes an image understandable.
It doesn't appeal to me too much to just work behind a computer, updating software,
but working with people is really what I'm interested in.
Working on applications, getting people's feedback on it, working in groups
and that's something that I also think a lot of people don't realize that computer science can be like.
It's basically just a field where you're problem solving
and you can choose whatever problems you want, whatever applications you want
and then work to solve those problems.
I don't know, I think just thinking up creative ways to solve problems,
if you're interested in that at all, then it's a really great field.
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I had an understanding that I wanted to work with rural communities in some ways.
So when I came to the University of Washington I told myself I really want a strong technical background.
I want to know how to create information tools that will be useful and relevant to rural communities.
So currently I'm working for Microsoft Research in India
and I'm in charge of the Digital Study Hall operations in and around Bangalore.
Digital Study Hall is really just trying to address the problems in education
in rural and slum communities currently around India.
It's trying to build what we call a people's database which is really
a database that we say is built by the people and for the people.
And this database is a storehouse for all sorts of educational content.
I think the ability to do this type of work is really what's drawn me to India
and it's really that on an everyday basis what keeps me here
and keeps me really motivated and driven to continue working here.
What a student gains as an undergraduate in the field of computer science
is really much, much greater than just the ability to code.
I think it's really a frame of mind that a student gets in terms of how to look at a big picture
and how to break that big picture up into smaller pieces
and analyze those smaller pieces, figure out how to make those pieces more efficient.
How do those pieces relate to each other?
How do they communicate with each other.
I think this frame of mind has really helped me understand how exactly these information systems can be built
and should be built for rural communities.
I think the thing that I have enjoyed most about being an undergraduate computer science major
really has been the ability to do real work,
to build real systems and applications that have implications for the poor people in our world.
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