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Four CSE Student Organizations participated in the USF Engineering Expo

Four CSE student organizations participated in the annual USF Engineering Expo. Engineering Expo showcases the work of STEM student organizations, corporate partners, and community partners. Engineering Expo provides educational and interactive demonstrations for peers, community members, and students in K-12 grades. Cub scouts can even get a merit badge for attending. Engineering EXPO is a free USF and Tampa Bay community event.

WOMEN IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (WICSE)

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鈥淎t the Engineering Expo, we did a coding activity similar to a MadLibs game, where students chose the words, the code created a story, and a speaker read it to them.鈥 Felicia Drysdale, (CS, WiCSE President). At the table, you could catch a glimpse of their program between the shoulders of gathered, giggling middle schoolers. 鈥淲e've had many girls come up to our table, and they were pretty intrigued about the program and how it works. I hope this makes them interested in tech!鈥 said Maanasa Poluparti (CS, WiCSE Secretary).

WiCSE, or Women in Computer Science and Engineering, is for female students who are majoring or interested in any engineering-related field to provide support, career guidance, and relevant opportunities.

鈥淪pecial thanks to our Expo Chair, Alex Cannon, for writing the code,鈥 said Felicia.

 

ROBOBULLS

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RoboBulls is for students who have a passion for robotics. Members have participated in national and international competitions, such as RoboCup. 鈥淚 was contracted by USF to develop these for a class,鈥 said Chance Hamilton (Treasurer), waving at the robots, 鈥渁nd our club uses them for competitions. We used to apply AI to soccer, but the codebase was very hard to learn. So I rewrote it in Python, and now we do the MicroMouse competition.鈥

MicroMouse has students create a robot that autonomously maps and navigates a maze. These competitions provide a common testing ground where scientific advances can be studied and evaluated under real-time conditions.

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SOCIETY OF COMPETITIVE PROGRAMMERS (SCP)

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鈥淲e focus on preparing people for competitive programming competitions and technical interviews,鈥 said Ali Aslanbayli (President), 鈥淏ut today we did something different. This is an AI Bot that detects your dance movements.鈥

At the table was a monitor showing a library of tiktok videos. Ali introduced me to Otabek Abduraufov, (Expo Co-Chair), the developer, who immediately asked me to try the program. 鈥淚t compares 18 points on the body and compares them to the ones in the video,鈥 said Otabek  鈥淚t uses cosine similarities, so depending on the angle of your bones it鈥檒l show the similarity percentage. It took us about three months overall.鈥

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INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS COMPUTER SOCIETY (IEEE-CS)

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鈥淲e finished it a few days ago,鈥 Zachary Menchel (Physics), 鈥淚t took us about three months,鈥 he added, showing me their translation station. The small black box translates morse code into a digital readout.

鈥淎fter getting the electronics done, we 3D printed the housing,鈥 Jacob Hansen (Computer Engineering), as someone started typing out their name.

The IEEE Society is a dynamic platform for members to learn, network, and collaborate about computer science and engineering. Their mentor program allows students to work and learn with someone more advanced in the field.

鈥淲e put our heads together, we had a problem we wanted to solve, and we were in there working day and night,鈥 said Alex Lee (IEEE Mentor), as he showed me how the box would open to show the insides.

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