ICS Summer Academy Continues to Expand with New Courses on Intelligent Robotics and Game Design

This summer, motivated and inspired high school students immersed themselves in complex computer science courses at the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) ICS Summer Academy. For the past five years, ICS Summer Academy participants enjoyed challenging classes led by UC Irvine faculty members, who encouraged their students to learn while gaining valuable insights about college on the UC Irvine campus.

This year, 172 students enrolled for 2-week sessions on topics, including Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Cybersecurity & Cryptography, Data Analytics, Software Engineering and a new course on Game Development & Design. Also new this year was a standalone 4-week session called Intelligent Robotics. Students have come from the local area, as well as around the country and even internationally. Numerous students took both sessions and have returned from previous years.

Julie Lindo, director of outreach of the Office of Outreach, Access and Inclusion, shared: “This year, our program experienced continued growth. It is a direct reflection of the brilliant students and exceptional talent in our area, which makes for an incredibly enriching college experience. It truly is a special milestone.”

Lindo also acknowledged Magda El Zarki, founding faculty director and ICS professor, “Her vision, leadership, and hard work expanded the program, and I’m so grateful for her guidance in making it the success it is today.”

Intelligent Robotics

In the new Intelligent Robotics course, each student learned hands-on building of an intelligent robot. Led by Ian Harris, professor of computer science, the session focused on multiple skills. Harris explained: “There are technical lessons all the time: designing the hardware, writing the code together with the hardware. They can’t do one without the other. Because with systems like this, they’re both working together. So if they just concentrate on the code, but they don’t think about what’s happening in the hardware, it’s not going to work well.”

“Then there are other more abstract things that they could learn. For instance, working in teams. I’m not explicitly teaching that, more like facilitating. I go to the groups, and I settle their differences. I suggest to them, you should work on this, you should work on this. You all have got to put your code together. ”

The ICS Summer Academy experience extends beyond the technical curriculum. Just as important are the people students learn alongside and learn from. Throughout the program, participants interact with current ICS undergraduates, master’s and Ph.D. students, faculty members and program staff, giving them a window into the people and community that make up the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.

Watch an Intelligent Robotics Capstone presentation below or on YouTube,

Learning, Community and Connection

Returning student Ford Qin has attended ICS Summer Academy three years in a row. “The professors are really good. Professor Shindler and Professor Harris have been really good and they teach really well,” he explained. “The lectures are much more interesting than I expected. I especially really enjoyed my first year with Professor Shindler. He really put anecdotes and a lot of other things into lectures. The cybersecurity course is really fun.”

Qin recognizes skills beyond building an intelligent robot from scratch. “It’s a lot of teamwork because I have to work with three other people. Also leadership skills that I definitely need. I think it’s more like communication. I feel like that’s the main skill here, because it’s about working with people. It’s about connecting with other people and learning the ideas and skills behind it.”

First-time student Evan Huang remarked, “The professor was really chill. He taught really well, and I made a lot of good connections here. For example, I’m working with my friend Chris, who I met here on a project, and I’m also able to talk privately or speak one on one with some of the professors here, which is really interesting. And I think it really has helped me create connections.”

Huang added that he will carry the skills he learned into the future: “I really think that working with microcontrollers is one of the things that I’m going to take into college and the application process, because there’s just so much variety in this field. It really links with so many majors, like electrical engineering, software engineering, and more. And when you get to work with things like Arduino, it opens up so many doors to Raspberry Pi, and things like that.”

He also found the experience had layers beyond the classroom: “I think it’s overall just a great time to meet new people and make connections. I think it’s definitely worth it. And it’s a lot of fun.”

Student Katlin Nguyen shared: “A lot of the people here are really nice, and I like to see everyone’s ideas. A few of the concepts in our robot were inspired by what we see in the other teams. And the staff are so supportive. I think I’ve had personal conversations with each of the TA’s, and I’ve had the professor come up and help me personally. I think it’s really nice to be able to meet everyone and have them help us.”

She continued, “I think everyone in our class learned to program in C for the first time, and I’ve only had coding experience with HTML and JavaScript, which is for websites. I’ve never had to code something and then have it going into the physical world, where you could see it and how it interacts with the physical world. It was really interesting.”

Thriving and Enduring Approaches

Kylie Peppler, new ICS Summer Academy faculty director and informatics professor, greeted the capstone audience on the final day: “Thank you parents for entrusting us with the education of your children this summer. I have three children of my own, and this is exactly the kind of camp that I look forward to for my children: the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies with applications to real-world settings. We’re looking at things from a college level that we know the future workforce is going to need, but also the things that are going to endure.”

“You’ve been learning things that the faculty have chosen, because it’s really important for the foundations of your future majors and your interests in these fields. This is cutting-edge content that you’re not going to find in any high school curriculum anywhere.”

Beyond developing technical knowledge, the goal is for participants to leave UC Irvine feeling more connected to the campus and ICS—and more confident in their ability to pursue computing in college and beyond.

Marios Papaefthymiou, ICS dean, noted the program’s continued expansion: “This is the fifth year in the Summer Academy. And it’s almost the definition of exponential growth. We started with one course in the summer of ’22. This year, we had seven courses: six of them two-week sessions, one of them with a 4-week session.”

He went on to thank the parents and students for prioritizing education and learning during the summer and expressed appreciation for the supporters of the program, “We also thank our sponsors, including anonymous ICS alumni and members of the community, and industry partners such as Pacific Life and Dassault Systemes, who have a passion for the new generation and make the program accessible for the community.”

Learn more about ICS Summer Academy at summeracademy.ics.uci.edu

– Tonya Becerra