Ph.D. Student Angel Sylvester Mentor’s High School Student.
What sparked your interest in computer science? What are your interests in the field?
My freshman-year introductory course sparked my interest in computer science. It covered Python programming fundamentals and was a classic undergraduate course at Macalester College. I didn't have any background in computer science and it was initially intimidating to me. As I immersed myself in the field, however, it became fairly intuitive and I became passionate about that subject. I enjoyed the problem-solving nature of it, as well as the opportunity to be creative in a computational type of way.
My thesis topic focuses on drawing inspiration from social insects to develop adaptive robot controllers that can exploit communication with other agents as they learn from interactions in dynamically changing environments for foraging-relevant scenarios. I have a dual major in Chemistry and Computer Science and enjoy ways to combine the two in my current work. I’m primarily interested in solutions that apply online learning (ie., via Bayesian updating or embodied evolution), especially within search areas that have sparse amounts of prior knowledge available. This work is specifically relevant in real-life situations, such as search and rescue operations, where you don’t know where the objects you are trying to recover are but the operation needs to be done as efficiently as possible.
How did you come to mentor high school students? What inspired you?
Last summer I was tasked with running some of the lab meetings over the summer. The purpose of these meetings was to provide undergraduate students with mentorship opportunities with Dr. Gini’s PhD students as they explore relevant research questions in multi-robot systems (ie., reinforcement learning, bio-inspired design of controllers). My advisor recommended I reach out to a high school student who wanted to attend the summer weekly meetings. She was interested in creating a project for the regional science fair. That sparked the beginning of the project. Throughout the entire summer, we went through the process of doing a literature review, as well as developing research questions that extended into the school year until about January.
As someone who didn't have a huge computer science background before attending college, I saw that the fundamentals of computer science, specifically computational thinking, are beneficial to people who may be interested in computer science, as well as people who aren't. I think it’s important to bring awareness to computational thinking, especially at a young age, for its general usefulness in problem-solving and as a way to expose students to a potential passion. It’s especially important for people who are from underrepresented groups such as women, who may think that computer science is too intimidating to even bother trying. Being able to encourage them and support them in their curiosity and their acquisition of knowledge is something that I want to be involved in.
What is the state and engineering fair that your student participated in? What was their project about?
She submitted her project to the regional science fair and then qualified for The Minnesota State Science and Engineering Fair. The project entails investigating how we can apply path planning, specifically adapting the A* path planning algorithm, in situations that are time-sensitive or risky. In particular, what we are interested in exploring is how we can have biology also inform the solution. Using A* as the foundation, we sought to also apply an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating ideas from economics and biology, to handle dynamically moving obstacles possessing variable risk. Specifically, we seek to inform path planning decision-making with risk assessment based on prior knowledge and interactions of the obstacles in the environment, generating waypoints that are flexible to the demands and urgency of the environment. This can be relevant in search and rescue operations where retrieval has variable constraints. This project won the silver award for being in the top 10% of projects and the 3M Young Inventor award.
What's your favorite thing about helping high school students?
When working with high school students, they come with a fresh perspective that I think allows you to see a problem from an interesting point of view and enables you to develop creative solutions. Working with them pushes you to bridge the gap between technical language and what is going to be applicable in real-life situations. I think that high school students come with that mindset and that allows you to reframe the problem and make it a little more grounded. I also think that they come with very interesting questions and are very open to trying and learning new things. I think it's very fun to work with them.
What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to continue working with high school students?
In the future, I want to continue pursuing a research role, specifically in an industry setting. My thesis work entails more of a bio-inspired approach applied to search and rescue options. In the future, I would be interested in applying myself in industry settings that likewise have that real-world relevance. That is where my passions lie, aligning artificial intelligence and robotics for the general good. I would also love to work with high school students even after graduating, even if it comes in the form of mentoring on a volunteer basis.
What is your advice for computer science students who want to give back?
Don’t be afraid to reach out if you’re interested in working with high school students or general outreach. I recommend reaching out to faculty members and developing those connections so that they're aware of your interests. Also, take every chance you get to network and speak with other people. I think that taking advantage of those opportunities is a key way to realize how projects suit you. Additionally, don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions. I think that if you are interested in getting involved with things, you should be very vocal about your ideas. There might be an interesting direction even though it might not be a fully fleshed-out idea. I think that is a very good skill to have. If you are working and mentoring other students, then you can fine-tune that skill as a mentor too.
Anything you would like to add/highlight in the article?
I do think that it is very empowering to be able to uplift students who might have little or no background in computer science. I think that being able to exercise collaborativeness and creativity in an open research-based setting is also very gratifying. I think that's something that I want to emphasize from this experience. Overall I think it's very positive from both a mentor perspective and a mentee perspective.