With its upcoming meeting on Sept. 21, the Computer Science Club plans to change up the club by focusing more on the applications of CS. CS club officers reflect on their time in the club and share their expectations for the upcoming year.

CS Club President Carol Wang

El Estoque: How has your time in the club been so far?

Carol Wang: “As a member, I really enjoyed seeing all the applications that CS knowledge can build. The president [of the club] before showed us this cool car that he actually programmed to move and that was really cool. And it was these kind of demos and examples of application that were really interesting to me. And so as an officer, I started having the opportunity to actually plan some of these lectures … And that was a really good experience because I was learning these things I was interested in and also presenting it to others.”

EE: What are your plans for the club this year?

CW: “This year, we really want to target concepts that are relevant to today. Because we want to make it interesting for members so we want to target artificial intelligence, Pokemon Go, these topics that more members would know about and be interested in. And our approach would be really to expose members to this. We don’t have to go too in depth, but at least get members interested so they could pursue further research by themselves.”

EE: Why do you think people should learn to code?

CW: “Especially as we’re using more and more technology, software is being integrated into so many different fields. Like from the taxi service industry to medicine, software is used to revolutionize so many other industries. And so code can be another language that could help you communicate with others. Code is so accessible too, so you can easily access it online, learn it and spread your ideas. So I think code is really a tool to implement your ideas and it’s a really powerful one.”

CS Treasurer Neil Palleti

EE: Why did you decide to join CS club?

Neil Palleti: “I took JAVA in freshman year and then AP [Computer Science] in sophomore year and then I realized maybe joining a club that would extend those things we learn in school, things that are much more interesting [with] more real life application.”

EE: How has your time in the club been so far?

NP: “I joined as a member in sophomore year and we did a bunch of stuff like training for competitions [and] learning about search engines . . . And then when I became an officer in junior year, we started diversifying a bit more. Going into topics like machine learning, image processing, more search engine stuff. And this year…our first meeting is actually learning how to hack Pokemon Go. So really doing things that apply to real stuff in the world.”

CS Club Officer Anika Cheerla

EE: What things worked or didn’t work for the club in the past?

Anika Cheerla: ”So one of the things that didn’t work was having hands-on coding while the lectures were going on. Because [the meetings] were during lunch and people didn’t want to code again if they already had a CS class or a Java class. So what probably works better is just having a lecture about certain topics in CS and letting them try it at home.”

EE: What’s your favorite part about computer science?

AC: ”My favorite topic of computer science is machine learning… I like robots and I want to eventually go into a field where I create robots.”