Future Leaders Winner Wants To Expand Science Experimentation With Computers
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. (CBS4) – Every month during the school year, CBS4, along with PDC Energy honor a high school student who's excelling in science, technology, engineering or math. The Future Leaders winner gets $1,000 and a profile on CBS4 News.
This month's winner is Nicole Chen. She's a senior at Cherry Creek High School, and her passion is computer science.
"By junior year, I became my teacher's assistant for the computer science at Creek. And I'm super involved in the coding clubs, and competitions at Cherry Creek High School," Chen explained.
Chen has reached outside her high school for opportunities to learn more coding, and computer applications. She got an internship at the Mines Interactive Robotics Research Lab, or MIRRORLab at the Colorado School of Mines.
"My project focuses on developing a machine learning algorithm that better helps robots conform to human socio-linguistic norms," Chen told CBS4 Meteorologist Ashton Altieri.
"So literally trying to make robots as human-like as possible?" Altieri asked.
"Yes," Chen responded with a laugh.
Chen is so passionate about computer science, she started a camp.
"The camps focus on teaching Java and processing to middle school students," she said.
DTC Computer Camps is a registered 501-c-3. Chen started the organization in 2017. She pairs high school volunteers with middle school students to learn coding. And when coronavirus hit, she took the whole program online.
"Because it's local, and because we have high school students teaching these middle school students, there are strong connections that are made," she said.
Chen also did an internship at the BIOelectrics Neuroscience Lab on the Anschutz Medical Campus. She helped to construct optic fiber brain implants using cannulas and used MATLAB to perform data analysis to establish a correlation between neural activity in the motor cortex and forelimb reach tasks.
"Specifically in my project, I focused on how the motor cortex improves coordination among patients, which can potentially help patients with paralysis, epilepsy, and Parkinson's disease," she explained.
"What was your personal take-away with being involved with something so substantial as that?" Altieri asked.
"This was my first computer science internship, so the first time I was able to dive into code from beyond the classroom. And ultimately the connections I was able to make between computer science, psychology, biology…have allowed me to see my code from beyond the computer screen and into real life," she replied.
When she's not coding, Nicole enjoys speech and debate. She has a part-time job, and she's nationally ranked in fencing. She has dozens of medals and plaques to prove it.
"Fencing is sort of like physical chess. There is a mental and physical aspect to the sport," she told CBS4.
Chen is getting ready for her next chapter in college. She plans to continue exploring how coding and computers can be used to expand other science disciplines.
