The Virginia Science Festival is taking place today, Nov 16, from 10am until 4pm, with a series of lightning talks to follow. The event is geared for young people, but it’s enjoyable to everyone. There are dozens of projects featured at the event, many hosted by the College of Science, the College of Engineering, the Center for Human Computer Interaction, the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, and lots of other clubs and organizations at Virginia Tech and in the area. As in years past, Tech on the Trail has some projects at the event:
- Shared outdoor experiences lets participants connect with others in a virtual recreation of the Moss Arts Center. The environment lets people traverse around Moss, with alerts for friends who are elsewhere that are intended to get them engaged with the experience. Derek Haqq is leading this project, assisted by Allison Collier and Setor Zilevu.
- How well do you know your leaves provides information about leaves from trees in the New River Valley area. Visitors to the exhibit will be able to see if they can do better than our image recognition algorithm at identifying leaves. This project, led by Neelma Bhatti and Morva Saaty, is part of a larger effort to see how to keep young children engaged in learning tasks.
Technology on the Trail 