With a range of fascinating presentations and workshops, the Faculty of Computer Science at TU Dresden once again attracted knowledge-hungry schoolgirls to this year’s Girls’ Day. The aim of Girls’ Day is to encourage young girls to pursue careers in technology and the natural sciences. Participants gained an insight into the diversity of computer science through the ‘Girls@Informatik: Experience Virtual Worlds and Robots Up Close’ programme. In the Interactive Medialab, they were able to gain insights into the fascinating world of modern human-computer interaction, try out cutting-edge technologies for the operating theatre of tomorrow, and immerse themselves in virtual reality worlds using the latest VR headsets, thereby gaining a deeper understanding of the research topics of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre “Center for Perspicuous Computing” (CPEC).
At the Adaptive Dynamic Systems research group, they learnt how computers ‘learn to see’ and how to programme the humanoid robot ‘Pepper’. Under the guidance of staff from the Distributed and Networked Systems research group, the pupils worked together to build and programme LegoMindStorms robots and were introduced to the user-friendly RIOT operating system for the Internet of Things. The girls particularly enjoyed their time at the Operating Systems Department, where they were able to assemble and programme their own small games consoles.
The discussion with the participants afterwards made it clear that the girls are very interested in computer science topics and were able to build on the skills they had learnt at school during the workshops.
