Students, teachers give presentation on coding and cybersecurity at ASME
Oak Ridge High School students presented about coding and cybersecurity at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge. Pictured are, from left, Brooklyn Farmer, Colton Lancaster, Spencer Pendley and Brian Qu. Behind them is Roane State Community College’s George Meghabghab. (photo:Ben Pounds )
A group of students recently delivered a presentation about coding, the process by which people create programs for computers to perform tasks, and cybersecurity, the process of defending computers and related systems from attacks such as viruses and hacking.
They spoke at the American Museum of Science and Energy on Wednesday, March 26. The talk was open to the public.
Presenters were Brooklyn Farmer, Colton Lancaster, Spencer Pendley and Brian Qu.
Keith Jackson, math and computer science teacher at ORHS, and George Meghabghab, professor of computer sciences, mathematics and science, and leader of a cybersecurity summer camp at Roane State Community College, also spoke.
Jackson said the jobless rate in cybersecurity is “zero percent,” adding that computing jobs in general are the top source of new wages in the U.S.
Farmer, a sophomore. outlined how she created an app that involved a quiz about sharks.
“Every app or website you use, uses code,” she said. “ ... I think it’s a great way for me to explore creativity, because you can make it your own.”
She said she hopes to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist, and that computers and coding are important to hospitals.
Lancaster talked about cybersecurity.
“The purpose of cybersecurity is to protect data in as many ways as possible from as many dangers as possible,” he said
A related field, he said, is cryptography, which involves cyphers and keys as ways to hide things.
Pendley described working on coding and seeing his results in the actions of a robot he programmed.
“Because the robot is physical, I was more able to see exactly what was going on,” he said. He also talked about two internships he completed that dealt with different aspects of computing.
At his first, at Acato Information Management LLC, he said he worked on hardware – computers’ physical parts. His second is with the G2 Project, which he described as government-related and involving software quality assurance for nuclear security.
Qu, a senior, described his “journey in programming.” It did not just involve taking classes but also an extracurricular Computer Science Club, which Qu re-founded.
The club helps other clubs with websites. He also helped create an ORHS mobile app that helps students schedule classes and figure out credits.
“It just makes the process much more simple,” he said.
He said working on this app helped him learn how to work with others. Since then, he has done an internship with Oak Ridge National Lab using artificial intelligence for work involving batteries.
Finally, Meghabghab talked about cybersecurity risks.
“At the heart of everything we do is risk,” he said. “If you don’t know your cyber risks, you’re going to be hacked.”