Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Students solve problems with 'super' computer program

Argen Duncan El Defensor Chieftain Reporter

Ten Socorro High School students are exploring the world of computer programming through projects in crime prediction, melting glaciers and solar energy.

Socorro High is entering its second year with Supercomputing Challenge, a competition in which students write a computer program to solve a problem they make up. Los Alamos National Laboratory sponsors the educational outreach program.

Computer science teacher and program adviser Bala Settu said the competition helps students take a complex problem, break it down into smaller portions and work on it.

"This program increases the programming skills for students, especially college-bound students," he said. "And it trains the students more toward engineering and science track."

Seniors in the competition almost always get scholarships, with the biggest being a $10,000 award renewable for four years from the lab.

Settu estimated students spend around five hours a week on their projects, mostly in class.

To start, they wrote proposals, and then Los Alamos scientists helped them break down and refine the projects. The students have interim reports due in December and the final competition in April in Los Alamos.

Also, they attended a kickoff conference with computing workshops and team-building exercises Oct. 23-24 in Glorietta.

"It was an excellent learning experience both for me and for the students," Settu said.

The group came away from the Glorietta trip with two of three teams winning first place in a rehearsal team-building puzzle and five donated computers. Settu said he hadn't decided if students would use the computers only for the Supercomputing Challenge.

"But they donated it, so we can use it for whatever we want," he said.

Senior Alex Takacs said Socorro students already knew much of the information presented at the conference from their classes, and he had experience from last year.

Sophomore Lisa Ortiz attended the kickoff for the first time.

"It was very informative for us," she said.

Ortiz' four-person team is writing a computer program to model the effects of melting Antarctic glaciers. Sophomore Ellen Aster came up with the idea.

Takacs, junior Omar Soliman and three other students are working to create a computer program that would predict crime. They got the idea from "Omar's brain and lots of caffeine," Takacs said.

Soliman said when he and others participated last year, they learned three o'clock happens twice a day. He meant they stayed up all night.

For the third Socorro project, a single student is working on a program to find how much energy an array of solar panels needs to provide electricity for a town like Socorro.

Takacs said he participates in the challenge because he needs scholarships and the activity is fun. The lab has many "cool" people, and some members of his group have a lot of talent even though he doesn't, Takacs said.

Since the information technology business went down, people have gone into programming, he continued.

"There's a lot of money involved," Takacs said. "It's really nice."

Soliman said the competition has career opportunities and looks good on résumés. It also provides a good way to get a project for and a special award at the science fair, he said.

He also appreciates the tour of the Los Alamos lab at the end of the year.

Aster named scholarships and learning to give presentations among her reasons for participating.

"Even for people who aren't really interested in computers, it's a good way to learn how to program things," she also said.

With today's technology, Aster continued, people need to be well rounded.

aduncan@dchieftain.com

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