Summer geekery, anyone?

So… COVID-19 is a reality this summer.
If your internship host didn’t get back to you or said they had to cancel, don’t panic! While that isn’t great, there are still some geek-useful things you can do this summer… even if you are also working a (non-tech) job somewhere.
It’ll help keep your skills honed – and maybe help you learn or do something useful to add to your resume. [Resume words in bold, below]

Some choices

You have some options here… you can do some of these (talk to the faculty member!) for credit. However, if you want credit(s) that move you towards your degree you will include the summer rate for courses at Valpo which is based on credit count. We can go down to .5 credit for that (which is less than $300 per the University’s info.)

You can also do something for 0 credits. This is “no cost” – and doesn’t help on the finishing-degree count in DataVU – but does get it on your transcript. Please just ask us.

For any credit or transcript recognition, you do need to talk to a prof AND sign up. If that’s not a big thing, that could be ok depending on the project (again, get in touch).

The Projects

Prof. Rosasco is going to host a few things (each with a few students possibly….):

  • a small ad-hoc group on Cyber Security (we’ll probably do some exploring of free tools out there and maybe mess with a few systems on VU’s network). You’d be pretty self-directed here, trying to answer some questions – and you’ll get to add some interesting tools for your resume.
  • There are some Python/DB and text parsing apps that either need work or need to be built. This effort will probably be led by a senior students or two who are already setup to help on this. (One of these apps needs to be ready to go for Fall semester – and needs to be done really well.) [Python, Data Processing, SQL, File processing and data cleaning, Linux]
  • If you’re interested in learning something about NVIDIA’s CUDA technology, a few folks could probably work on some tutorials and look at some challenges about innovative use of GPUs. [Linux, CUDA, GPU]
  • One or two students could also work on converting a Raspberry Pi into a “remote control” for a larger PC (part of a larger effort for keeping electronics out of the trash stream). This is a chance to work hands on with some hardware. [Single board computer, Raspberry Pi, Linux, probably Python, IPMI/Remote Administration.]

Prof. Glass has several things:

  • The main project I would be looking for is students to restructure and expand the web-based typed-chat application which is written in Java / Javascript / Tomcat.
  • I also have a web site that is supposed to be for administering labs: professors can upload problems, upload student rosters, etc. The site should be useful for running pre-tests and post-tests, things like that. It is written in a PHP model, view, controller framework.
  • Finally, somebody who would be interested in working on a text analytics pipeline and a dashboard. This would be Python programming plus some web page creation, probably more Tomcat.

Prof. Glass is looking for a smaller group (two to three students). These projects are directly related to his long term research – so you could get published — as in, your name officially on research work other CS people see. http://compsproject.org has for more info on the project and the papers that have come from it.