Computer science is taking on a public-service bent at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where students and faculty in a new program are using code to combat societal problems like homelessness and the spread of HIV.
The program, dubbed “Computing for Good,” or “C4G” for short, spun out of a course taught last spring by Santosh Vempala, a computer-science professor at Georgia Tech, and two other faculty members. Students in the class, which saw its enrollment jump to 50 this fall from 17 last spring, developed mobile kiosks for recording war-crimes testimony in Liberia and built a Web-based monitoring system for blood supplies that the World Health Organization is considering deploying worldwide. Other projects included developing computerized systems for Atlanta homeless shelters trying to manage occupancy levels and Internet access for low-income Atlanta residents.
Mr. Vempala said the course, which is offered to both undergraduate and graduate students, was started in the hope of giving students and professors a chance to work on real-world problems. The work also provides specific research challenges: Unlike some of the more theoretical problems that computer scientists often deal with, those designing solutions for nonprofit groups must often deal with resource constraints and make sure customers are seeing tangible results from the programs, he said.
Stefany Wilson, a spokeswoman for the College of Computing, said the C4G is also exploring industry partnerships and expanded faculty research efforts.—David Shieh
3 Responses to New Program at Georgia Tech Pairs Computing With Public Service
Stan Carey - June 21, 2012 at 10:08 am
Nice discussion of a fruitful analogy. In a letter to a young reader, C. S. Lewis likened the child’s teacher to a gardener distinguishing flowers from weeds, and described himself by contrast as a botanist who was “interested in both as vegetable organisms”.
dank48 - June 21, 2012 at 10:09 am
This expresses the matter so gracefully that I feel like trespassing vandal for wanting to comment even in regard to a detail. Still, while I agree of course that “None of us is born with a language,” it seems to me worth noting that our gardens are initially seeded by those in our environment, not by ourselves. (That is probably so obvious that you chose not to mention it.) But it does explain why we speak the language(s) we do and why we speak the way we do.
Really fine article.
johnbagnall - June 21, 2012 at 11:36 am
I love the analogy(ies). Thank you for an inspired post…