A Quote on Computers and Humans

A quote by Robert B. O’Connor in the Journal of Occupational Medicine, April 1968:

Computers are extremely fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are notoriously slow, sloppy and highly intelligent. When the intelligence of humans is coupled with the speed and accuracy of computers, data processing that far outreaches anything in the past becomes possible.

ps: maybe this is a good quote for me to use every time I assign students in my classes projects involving computer programming.

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Postgraduate research project

For the initial phase of the FlyOutreach project, I am offering to fund a postgraduate student for a Master degree by research here at the School of Aerospace Engineering, USM. The main background of the two aspects of the FlyOutreach project can be read further here: Outreach & UAV.

The scope of this Master degree project will be focused mostly on designing and building a UAV.

I am also looking to hire 2 undergraduate research assistants (one more vacancy left!) to support the project. Contact me here if you are interested to discuss more about these positions.

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Flying Vehicles

(There are two parts to this FlyOutreach project. The outreach part is described in this post.)

The aerospace engineering aspect of this project is on designing, building, and integrating the tools (i.e. the flying vehicles) we use in the demonstration and practical sessions. We plan to build remote-controlled model planes and eventually autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), uniquely designed for demonstration purposes. We plan to integrate live-streaming video (e.g. FPV), GPS navigation, and other capabilities to make things more exciting.

Detailed analysis on the flight performance of these UAVs will need to be done, not only for the formality of the design process and to simulate the flight behavior, but also to show to the secondary school students that we can use math to predict how these planes will fly even before they take-off. That'll be eye-opening and motivating to the students, I guess, when they see that the maths they are learning at school actually have some real applications.

Another engineering aspect of the project is on designing what tools to be used for the students in their hands-on activities. Obviously, when it comes to aerospace, it will have to be about building something that flies. But what, and how complex? That's the interesting part, where we need to think carefully on this practical module so that the students get a real sense of excitement when building something creatively using the newly acquired knowledge they learn in this program. These hands-on activities should also bring into students a sense of exploration, self-discovery, trial-and-error, team-working, and competitiveness (probably within a competition between students to build the best products).

Update 5/2/2014: Students working on designing UAVs in this project will mostly use CEASIOM (Computerised Environment for Aircraft Synthesis and Integrated Optimisation Methods), a new multidisciplinary aircraft design software developed under a large European project through a collaboration of 17 partnerships.

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Outreach

(There are two parts to this FlyOutreach project. The flying vehicles part is described in this post.)

The main goal of the outreach part of this project is essentially to get more secondary school students interested in science. Here, I'm referring to science in general, which includes fields related to math, engineering, and technology. The tasks at hand to do this genuinely are quite challenging. There's a multitude of perspectives that we need to consider:

1. Developing the program content: How should the program be designed and what content should be included to maximize outcomes? Some general aspects that might be included could be on delivering knowledge to the students to introduce key scientific principles that matter to the program, demonstrating the practical aspects of the scientific knowledge to establish their usage and importance in the real world, and perhaps building interactive sessions with the students so they become directly "engaged" in science. Of these three, which aspect will give the most impact? How do we integrate these three aspects into a whole package of an outreach program?
2. Identifying and measuring outcomes that matter: One of the relevant outcomes should be in terms of the increase in the number of students getting more interested in science after going through the program. How do measure more subtle aspects of the outcomes, e.g. students' behavior towards science? Will it be a one-off outcome where students' interest diminish afterward? What can we do to make any positive outcomes more permanent, where students' interest in science can be sustained over a long period of time?
3. Using relevant aerospace technology: What tools from the aerospace side that we should use to get the students genuinely excited about aerospace in particular and about science in general. Can we just get (read: buy) these tools anywhere? I think the impact is greater if we design and build them ourselves. How far into the design and building process do we have to go into and that we can share with the students at the secondary school level? I believe if we start from scratch this project can be more influential in terms of affecting students' motivation and aspirations positively rather than if we simply buy things off-the-shelf to demonstrate these things to the students.
4. The scale of running the program: The problem is a national problem, which means the scale of a program that can make a real impact should be large. But our attempt to do it will be limited based on our experience and resources. So what should be our strategy to maximize the value of information we get from the program? Some things to consider are the difference between students in rural/urban schools, students' varying exposure to science and technology, dominant factors in the program that produce real changes in students' attitude towards science, etc.
5. Language and culture: Most of the world's information are written in English, including educational resources on science for secondary/high school students. Is this - the language barrier - an influential factor affecting students' attitude towards science in Malaysia? Is our popular culture supportive to build a healthy attitude towards science, e.g. promoting inquisitiveness from young ages?

Taking all the above into consideration, our initial planning is to engage a few secondary schools, probably surrounding the nearby area but hopefully with varying demographics and performance to get data from a wide range of perspectives. With the current resources and funding that we have, each of the outreach program at these different schools will be a short one or two-day program. And within this limited time, we have to cram in a number of different modules, including a learning module to "uncover" relevant scientific principles but at the level that these students can appreciate, a demonstration module to show the practical use of these principles, a practical session module where the students get to apply these principles by themselves. An obvious challenge that we have is how to make these modules interesting. There's no point of doing all these if the modules don't excite students' imagination and interest towards science.

Reading the above, one may come to conclude that this project is heavily centered on the education side. The answer is yes (but more rightly fit into the engineering education category). We want to do this because we want to address a real and urgent problem, and it just happens that this "interesting" problem is more of a social/educational problem. But it's also a 'science' problem (as opposed to a scientific problem) - if less people are getting interested in science, how can that NOT BE a problem for science (in Malaysia)? It's a question of sustaining a pipeline of future scientists and engineers and technologists and mathematicians. So there's definitely a big potential here for somebody from these science fields to help contribute to tackle the problem. And that's where we come in...

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People

My name is Zulfaa Mohamed Kassim, the person behind the FlyOutreach effort. I'm a faculty at the School of Aerospace Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia. I studied aerospace engineering at the University of Minnesota, from bachelor, master, to doctoral degrees. Previously, I worked in the areas of particle-image velocimetry, multiphase flows, truck aerodynamics, and aircraft noise (the last two as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Manchester). Now back in Malaysia, I'm interested to work in areas that contribute directly to the urgent needs here. I find the issue of sustaining skilled human capital (i.e. the lack of students' interest in science) in Malaysia to be quite serious - and thus motivating! - but not really getting the full attention that it should. A part of my work now is focused on using aerospace science, engineering, and technology to get students enthusiastic about science for the enlightening part of it, for the practical side of it, and most certainly for the fun part of it. All in all, I believe aerospace engineering with all its flying things can offer the "cool" side of science. I can be contacted here.

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