Summer students from all over the world display their research work at DCU

Poornima Hanumara with her 'Nabaztag'

The Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School (ODCSSS) held its Mid-Term Research Day on Friday 11th July. The students, from DCU and other universities in Ireland and abroad, showcased their online projects.

Poornima Hanumara (photo), from the University of Texas uses the popular ‘Nabaztag’ or talking rabbit to connect families. The project is called ‘Connecting families by sharing the minutiae of their lives’. Poornima, from India, is developing a link that will enable parents monitor their child’s usage of the internet without intrusion. For example, if a teenager logs on to their face book site and updates their online status, the ‘Nabaztag’ will feed this information outloud/verbally to the parents.

The ODCSSS students were selected from more than 100 candidates representing six countries - Ireland, USA, Romania, India, Spain and Poland.

Dr Gabriel-Miro Muntean from the School of Electronic Engineering said, “ODCSSS is a vehicle which gives exceptional undergraduate students the opportunity to participate and contribute to exciting research projects at leading research facilities located at both DCU and UCD. It is hoped that ODCSSS will attract students to come work with us in the future giving us a larger pool of potential researchers from which we can draw on”.