About 25 undergraduate students from Duke and elsewhere spent this summer at the Department of Computer Science, working for faculty on a variety of projects. The students — about two-thirds from Duke — spent ten weeks delving into computational biology, computational economics, mobile security, virtual reality and more.

Some students helped conduct research, others – like Chris Brown and Diane Li, both Duke students majoring in computer science – were part of multi-faceted projects. Brown, a senior, participated in the context of the Computer Science Undergraduate Research Fellows Program (CSURF). Li, a junior, participated as a way to explore options for her future.

Students in the program attended a weekly lunchtime talk series specifically designed to expose them to different aspects of the intellectual life of a graduate student. They found the talks to be as important as their hands-on summer projects.

"We like to have an environment in the summer that's kind of similar to graduate school so that students can get that experience and see what graduate school might be like," said Professor Susan Rodger, who helped coordinate the summer research program with Computer Science Associate Chair Richard Lucic. Both Brown and Li worked on projects supervised by Rodger.

Brown gained teaching experience even as he worked to integrate computing into secondary school disciplines through the computer programming language Alice, a 3D animated programming environment. For three weeks in a workshop setting he taught secondary school teachers how to use Alice and develop lesson plans around it. He also helped create math curriculum materials, such as multiplication and probability quizzes. For the multiplication quiz's environment, he created a basketball game. If the player enters the correct product for two random numbers, the basketball goes through the hoop. If he enters the wrong number, the ball breaks the backboard.

"The main reason I got involved is because I'm considering graduate school and I wanted to see what graduate school would be like," Brown said. He noted that the program, the lunchtime talk series, and the papers he was assigned to read as a CSURF participant helped him gain a better perspective about the importance of computer science.

This was Li's second consecutive summer in the department. Last year she also worked on Alice; this year she tackled the Java Formal Languages and Automata Package (JFLAP), software Rodger developed to experiment with visualizing and better understanding various topics in formal languages and automata theory. Li and two other students worked on a new version of the software, with Li adding set theory to the topics covered to better show how sets are the foundation of more advanced topics in formal language theory, and to allow users to create and perform operations on sets.

Li said she was very curious and interested to see what hands-on computer science work would be like. Indeed, she says it was "a great way to apply what I learn in class to practice with real-world applications or on projects that involve other people. It's definitely also helped me learn more about academia as a postgraduate option and generally just view the ideas I study in class from another perspective."

Throughout the summer, on Wednesdays over lunch, all 25 students were able to interact with and learn about different disciplines within computer science. Each talk featured a different faculty member or graduate student. Some discussed specific research areas. Others spoke about life in graduate school, sometimes dispelling misconceptions, such as the notion that computer science graduate students don't get paid, or that students must enter graduate school knowing what they plan to study.

"The purpose is ultimately to encourage them to go on to graduate school," Lucic said, noting the program helps students consider fields they would not otherwise have been exposed to as undergraduates.

Both Brown and Li were particularly interested in Professor Vince Conitzer's talk on game theory and its applications in security domains, such as the assignment of federal air marshals to certain flights and the Coast Guard's patrol strategies for Boston Harbor. Li noted that a talk by Professor Alex Hartemink inspired her to take a computational genomics course last fall, and that she is registering for additional courses in specific response to other speakers.

"I know I want to get a feel for what industry is like before I make any decisions," Li said, "but I can certainly say that the summers working in computer science helped me learn more about grad school and what it's like, so that I am in a position to consider it at all."