High school students from the northern region of Portugal spent a week at the University of Minho, and they had the opportunity to explore their areas of interest.
Curious, amused, and eager to learn. It’s the best way to describe the 20 high school students who visited INESC TEC High-Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab) for the “Computing without Borders”, part of the Summer on Campus initiative, promoted by the University of Minho between July 17 and 21.
Over five days, the participants had their first contact with computing, while performing activities related to Green Computing, Quantum Computing, Distributed Computing and Protocols, or Encryption and Data Security.
“Many students go to college without knowing what awaits them; this type of initiative is important to help them and support their decisions“, mentioned José Nuno Macedo, HASLab researcher and professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto – who promoted the Green Computing activities, together with Rui Rua and Francisco Ribeiro, also researchers at INESC TEC.
The afternoon dedicated to Green Computing, in which the students had the opportunity to program their own robots via the RoboCode system, was highly praised by the participants. “We provided them a brief programming experience and the possibility to see how the robot behaved, according to their program”, recalled the researcher.
The students also had the chance to discuss their findings and interact with each other, while solving a programming issue related to a robot – which required knowledge of mathematics, something that participants had already acquired during their high school path.
Besides the aforementioned researchers, the activities also featured José Nuno Oliveira (coordinator of the activities), Ana Néri, Ana Nunes Alonso and José Bacelar Almeida – all researchers at HASLab.
The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC, U.Minho and UP-FEUP.
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