Cal Poly Computer Science & Software Engineering Newsletter 2022

CSSE News

Computer Science & Software Engineering • Cal Poly College of Engineering • Spring 2021

Mapping Disaster

Cal Poly professors create A.I. map to identify destroyed structures during wildfires

CSSE News A Greater Sense of Community

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fter a pandemic that forced us to be apart, we’re now looking to build a greater sense of community within the department. And we have several developments that will help us achieve that goal, including an exciting new graphics and game development lab.

We’re hoping to find a sponsor for that initiative, which we will detail more in the future. In the past, we’ve been fortunate to have industry partners like Hewlett Packard Enterprise sponsor labs, which allows us to provide students with the latest, most relevant technology.

Recently, PG&E, another lab sponsor, provided crucial support for a faculty member in the Critical Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Lab. That faculty member, Stephen Beard, is a Cal Poly graduate, who earned his master’s and doctorate degrees from Princeton while working in inChris Lupo dustry and co-founding a consulting firm that received funding from the National Science Foundation. Beard, an assistant professor, joined our faculty last spring, and he is already sharing excellent security knowledge with our students. We’re excited to see what he will do with PG&E’s support.

Another industry partner, Chevron, has also helped the department with high resolution data displays.

While industry support is critical to our success, we also rely on alumni to further our goals. One of our professors, John Seng, has been garnering support from alumni for an intriguing robotics project. In a past newsletter, we detailed how Seng and students have worked on Herbie, a friendly robot programmed to cruise around parts of campus.

Speaking of helpful alumni, Gary Bloom is an active one, who has provided key support, both financially and with his generous time. As you’ll read here, Bloom is working with Professor Franz Kurfess to develop technology that will make search and rescue efforts more efficient.

That capstone is being taught virtually, allowing Bloom, a retired tech executive and longtime search and rescue volunteer, to share knowledge with students from his home in the Bay Area.

We do all this to further student success, of course. And here you will learn how some of our outstanding students are already making a difference. By supporting students like them, you too can have an impact. n

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Cover | This Page A program using A.I. that helps people identify buildings and structures destroyed by wildfires was developed by professors Jonathan Ventura (computer science) and Andrew Fricker (social science). Story on Page 6.

Laura McGann, far left, pictured with the rest of the EMPOWER leadership team: left to right, Pearse Lipscomb, Ally McCabe and Ana Conrado.

Empowered to Make a Difference

Computer science student heads effort to build robotic exoskeleton

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hen she visited the Cal Poly campus as a high school senior, Laura McGann noticed an intriguing lab in the engineering plaza.

“I peeked in the windows and saw rows of prosthetic feet,” she said.

A student inside the lab invited her in and described some of the prosthetic work and other assistive devices students were creating for people with physical challenges.

“It was a large reason why I came to Cal Poly,” McGann said.

Now a 4th-year computer science major and a member of the EMPOWER club that uses that lab, McGann is CEO of the Lower-Limb Exoskeleton Assist Project (LLEAP) which aims to give lower-limb mobility to Tamar De Leon, a 23-year-old local community member.

Laura McGann In the third year of the EMPOWER project, students are preparing to build prototypes of the exoskeleton — an external frame powered by electric motors — which would allow De Leon to move his legs. Working on the interdisciplinary proj-

ect, McGann said, has fostered a love of research.

“It runs the gamut of all the engineering disciplines at Cal Poly, which is why I love this project so much,” said McGann, who plans to conduct related research as a grad student.

The EMPOWER club has provided her technical experience and taught her to communicate across disciplines, but mostly she has enjoyed helping others.

“As a computer science major, I see a lot of my friends right about now getting job offers for 6-figure salaries, going to work for Microsoft and Amazon,” she said. “And I’m so happy for them; they’re going to do great things. But for me, it comes back to being able to work with people and try to help improve their quality of life in some way, giving back what I can.” n

“It runs the gamut of all the engineering disciplines at Cal Poly, which is why I love this project so much.” csc.calpoly.edu | 3

CSSE News

On the

Move

Zeeshan Khan’s startup, Zoetic Motion, aims to help injured athletes heal

Zeeshan Khan is co-founder of Zoetic Motion, a portal that helps physicians and physical therapists to work with patients in their homes.

“What we were trying to do specifically was work on reducing the likelihood of injuries and alert users of the potential for upcoming injuries.

Specifically, users who are very active.”

H

aving suffered a few broken bones himself through the years, Zeeshan Khan knows there’s an important mental aspect to recovery.

“You have to push,” he said. “You have to remain mobile.”

Those who have suffered injuries can work with a physical therapist, but insurance only covers so many visits, requiring patients perform “homework.” And, Khan learned, only about 35 percent of patients actually do physical therapy at home. So he and a partner came up with a web platform designed to motivate users to continue their rehab.

Zoetic Motion would act as a portal, enabling physicians and physical therapists to assign exercises, with notes and visuals.

Users can watch video demonstrations and get real time feedback from matching the motion.

“We’re trying to add confidence and a support factor to the user outside of the clinic,” Khan said.

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The initiative is now gaining a boost in the Incubator Program at Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE). The 2-year program helps startups by providing mentorship, connections to investors, an advisory board and more.

Khan’s startup began as a senior project with a different name and goal. Working with another computer science student, two mechanical engineering majors and a business student on a senior project, he co-founded Muscle Ninja, a muscle monitor that was more preventive than reactive.

“What we were trying to do specifically was work on reducing the likelihood of injuries and alert users of the potential for upcoming injuries,” he said. “Specifically, users who are very active. For example, triathletes and extreme runners.”

When multiple members of the project team found jobs and moved on, Khan and mechanical engineering graduate Ivet Avalos forged ahead, taking their idea to the CIE’s Summer Accelerator Program, which

provides support to budding businesses.

Once in the program, they began to reflect and then transition after speaking to numerous athletes.

“We actually learned a lot, and we realized the real thing we wanted to try to solve was not necessarily preventing injury but more helping people recover the right way,” Khan said.

With startups, the team is often more important than the initial concept, said Tom Katona, a faculty mentor at the CIE. “Almost every startup has to pivot and learn their way through initial challenges to find what we refer to as ‘product market fit,’” Katona said. “Zeeshan and his partner Ivet have already pivoted during their journey, which I see as a positive sign because it demonstrates their capacity to learn and adjust to meet the needs of their customers. Many entrepreneurs get married to their original concept and keep pushing it despite mounting evidence from actual customers that they need to modify their

business model, so people who avoid this trap are far more likely to be successful.”

Khan and Avalos eventually graduated to the CIE’s Incubator program with their idea. Since it opened in 2010, the CIE has launched over 120 companies that created over 1,000 jobs. The startups currently in the Incubator program focus on new mothers, winemakers, first responders, bakers and artists.

Zoetic Motion targets those with physical injuries, including athletes. Their platform seeks to improve patient adherence while “gamifying the process and rewarding our users,” according to its website.

“It definitely reminds you to remain mobile,” Khan said.

Having suffered sports injuries that include a broken knee, nose, thumb and wrist, Khan understands the recovery process. He also has a diverse background.

He’s currently the president of Color Coded, which provides support to traditionally marginalized students who code; he has

served as an ambassador promoting the College of Engineering; and he speaks six languages.

“Zeeshan brings a diverse, well rounded, and unique point-of-view to his startup, which provides a great advantage when thinking through company culture, working through the customer journey, and the overall business strategy,” said Lori Jordan, a Cal Poly alumnus and CIE advisor to Zoetic Motion.

Jordan said Khan and Avalos work and communicate well as a team — and they brought a useful idea to the table.

“I like that their idea gives people flexibility and control when it comes to their physical therapy needs,” Jordan said.

Leading a startup suits Khan well. Even before coming to Cal Poly, he envisioned himself as a CEO of his own business.

“I don’t want to be a cog in the wheel at a larger company,” he said. n

Zeeshan Khan, right, works with business partner Ivet Avalos on their startup, Muscle Ninja, during the Summer Accelerator program.

The pair later changed the name and focus of their startup, now Zoetic Motion.

csc.calpoly.edu | 5

CSSE News Cover Story

Professors Jonathan Ventura (computer science), right, and Andrew Fricker (social science) have developed DamageMap, a program that helps people identify buildings and structures destroyed by wildfires.

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hen a devastating wildfire raged near his childhood home in 2018, Andrew Fricker desperately tried to learn what had happened to his parents’ home near Paradise, CA. “We could see that the area was on fire,” said Fricker, an assistant professor in the Social Sciences Department. “And that was all the information we had.”

While his parents had safely evacuated, it would be more than three weeks before they would know if their home, like so many others in the Camp Fire, had been relegated to ashes.

“I found myself actually downloading satellite images to find out if the place had burned down,” Fricker said.

That experience led Fricker to team up with Jonathan Ventura, an assistant professor in the Computer Science & Software Engineering Department, to develop technology that would reduce the uncertainty of wildfire damage. Their project, DamageMap, uses machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, to identify burned buildings. To develop the program, the researchers fed tens of thousands of images of structures into the program.

“We’ve shown it lots of examples of undamaged and damaged structures, and it learns how to recognize them,” Ventura said.

Homeowners could use that information to send insurance loss claims after a disaster like the Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed 18,000 buildings.

“If you can prove your house burned down, you can get a check,” Fricker said.

Without such technology, evacuated residents might not 6 | COMPUTER SCIENCE & SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Mapping Disaster Cal Poly professors create A.I. map to identify destroyed structures during wildfires

learn about the fate of their homes for days or weeks.

“They have to let emergency personnel in there first to make sure it’s safe before they can go and sift through the rubble,” Fricker said.

That uncertainty is one of the factors that prompts some residents to ignore evacuation orders.

“I spent days thinking, ‘My house could be burning right now,” Lisa Smith Beasley told the Antelope Valley Times Herald for a story about DamageMap. Beasley’s home was spared from a wildfire in the Santa Cruz area, but many impacted by that fire simply didn’t know for weeks.

With his own personal experience in mind, Fricker reached out to Ventura to develop a better method of assessment. Existing mapping technology required both pre- and post-fire images. But it was often difficult to line up the two.

DamageMap, which has been more than 90 percent accurate, can be used as soon as the smoke clears enough for post-fire images.

“We need a clear shot of the buildings,” Ventura said. “If the area is still obscured by smoke, we probably can’t see through well

The DamageMaps program can be trained to locate damaged cars as well as structures. At right, a closeup of the Camp or Carr fire in California in 2018. The red structures were damaged while the green structures survived. Photo: Andrew Fricker.

enough to distinguish damaged and undamaged structures.”

Images can come from satellites, drones or aircraft. The maps created from those images offer a wider look at the extent of damage, while also revealing the pure chance element of a natural disaster.

“It comes in surprising patterns, where one house will be fine and the one right next to it is destroyed,” Ventura said.

As they continued to develop their project, Stanford University researchers also became involved. Their work was published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

With climate change increasing the risk of dangerous wildfires, the researchers are seeking more funding.

“We’re trying to do a more extensive evaluation,” Ventura said.

“We’ve tested it on two big fires, but we’d like to test it on a lot more fires.”

The program could also be trained to recognize other objects, including damaged cars or downed power poles. Eventually, emergency personnel and government officials might be able to use the program in directing resources to fires and other disasters,

including earthquakes.

Meanwhile, Fricker’s parents have since moved back into their home, which was spared even though a trash can near the house had melted and a shed Fricker’s father had built was destroyed.

“It was really smoke damaged,” Fricker said. “They couldn’t go back in there for months.”

Fricker’s father had worked hard to fireproof the home, which might have made it easier to evacuate the most deadly fire in California history.

“Some people left too late,” Fricker said. n

csc.calpoly.edu | 7

CSSE News

Computer science student Luis Plascencia was named a national CyberHero for his leadership in cyber education and research.

Prepared to Defend Computer science student and national CyberHero Luis Plascencia has been groomed to combat cyber threats

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he cybersecurity industry faces challenges from a variety of foes with a wide range of goals. But whether they’re pursuing financial crimes, terrorism or acts of espionage, these cyber villains share at least one concerning trait: They’re getting better.

“Tactics of bad actors are constantly changing year after year, so the idea of having to keep up with these evolutions seems overwhelming to me at times,” said Luis Plascencia, a third year computer science student.

Fortunately, Plascencia is up for the task, having gained confidence in his cybersecurity abilities through his long association with the Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute.

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“A lot of concepts in cybersecurity are just so fascinating,” Plascencia said. “In my eyes, it’s the study of imperfection in technology and human psychology. I feel like generally we expect technology to be completely safe, but once you start looking deeper into the various vulnerabilities present in any device, you start to realize what the bigger picture truly looks like.”

In October, Plascencia was named National CyberHero by synED, a non-profit organization that promotes education. Specifically, the organization commended Plascencia for being an inspiring leader in cyber education and outreach.

One of his roles as a lead software developer at CCI has entailed designing, managing and writing code for the California

Cyber Innovation Challenge, a virtual 7-hour forensics and cybersecurity competition designed for middle and high school students. A resident of nearby Cambria, Plascencia had actually participated in the CCIC throughout high school.

“Because of these competitions, my level of interest in cybersecurity and computer science kept increasing year after year,” he said.

Henry Danielson, a technology advisor for the CCI, has known Plascencia since he was a student in Cambria’s Coast Unified School District, where Danielson has also worked as director of technology.

“I have worked with Luis since he was in middle school and helped and watched him grow into a magnificent cybersecurity professional,” Danielson said.

At Coast Union High School, Plascencia was a member of the squad that won the best new team award in 2017. Well aware of Plascencia’s technical and public speaking skills, Danielson helped him land the position at CCI. Plascencia’s continued involvement with the challenge, even in college, shows that the event is succeeding in its goal of garnering interest in cyber security, said Danielle Borrelli, operations coordinator.

“The mission is to drive workforce development, and Luis is the perfect example of the success of the competition and program,” Borrelli said. “We know several other students on similar paths as Luis, and they got their start or a leg up with the CCIC.” As a CCI employee, she said Plascencia is a quick-learning innovator and problem solver with a positive outlook.

“Luis is genuinely a good person, and it’s evident in his conversations and interactions with others,” she said. “It also bleeds into his work as he strives for excellence in all that he does.”

In addition to his CCIC work, Plascencia created Cal Poly’s Digital Transformation Club, which seeks to bring together a diverse group of students from different majors to research, innovate and problem solve a specific issue — climate change being the current focus. And he works on CCI’s Cyber to Schools program helping underserved students around the country learn progressively more challenging computer science and cybersecurity skills while finding nontraditional pathways to cyber careers.

Adding diversity to cybersecurity, he said, adds more perspective, experience and potential for innovation.

“By bringing more students from various backgrounds, we find ourselves a window of

opportunity for a more well-versed community of problem solvers in the field,” he said.

Plascencia’s parents were both born in Mexico, where he lived for four years, beginning in 2008.

That experience, he said, gave him perspective and made him appreciate the greater opportunities in the United States.

Now a third year student, he spends much time on self-reflection.

“If my schedule permits, I wake up at 5 a.m. to journal about my plans for the day and the longterm goals I set for myself, almost as a reminder of what I’m dedicating my life to,” he said.

Plascencia has been wracking up experience toward his goals. This past summer, he was an intern with the Department of Defense, and in the fall, he began an internship with Cal Poly’s Digital Transformation Hub. Next summer, he will begin a prestigious internship as a software engineer with Microsoft’s cloud security team near Seattle.

After graduation, he is interested in addressing malware or DDoS (denial of service) attacks.

While cybercriminals are becoming ever more sophisticated in their tactics, Plascencia’s past has groomed him for the challenge he is eager to face.

“None of this would’ve been possible without the phenomenal people in my life who I’ve had the pleasure to work and interact with — from those who helped me relearn how to speak and read English in middle school, to my teachers and classmates supporting our cybersecurity efforts in high school, and now to those at the CCI and DxHub that give us the motivation and opportunity to create an impact on the world around us,” he said. “I am forever grateful for all their support and aim towards paying it forward in my life.”n

Experience with the Cal Poly California Cyber Institute led to Luis Plascencia to create the Cal Poly Digital Transformation Club, which is working to innovate solutions to climate change.

“In my eyes, it’s the study of imperfection in technology and human psychology.

I feel like generally we expect technology to be completely safe, but once you start looking deeper into the various vulnerabilities present in any device, you start to realize what the bigger picture truly looks like.”

Luis Plascencia | CSSE Student

csc.calpoly.edu | 9

CSSE News

On the Path to Quicker Rescues W

hen Gary Bloom first began volunteering for search and rescue missions as a Cal Poly student in the late 70s, team leaders would plop a map on a truck hood, designate areas with a marker and assign people to scour those locations for the missing.

“There’s an adrenaline rush even after all these years,” Bloom said. “But at the same time, we ultimately want to improve the efficiency and outcome of each search operation — find them quicker.”

With that in mind, Bloom, an honored alumnus, has been working with Franz Kurfess in the Computer Science and Software Engineering Department, and Lynne Slivovsky, chair of the Computer Engineering Department, to create technology that will make search and rescue missions more efficient. Specifically, Bloom suggested building a data platform to manage operations.

Last summer, a team of Cal Poly students delivered a proof of concept that proved the viability of the idea. Since then, he has been working with the students and faculty members to develop

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Professor Franz Kurfess has been working with two Cal Poly graduates and students to develop technology that would assist search and rescue volunteers.

Cal Poly students are working with two Cal Poly grads to make search and rescue missions more efficient

both a front-end application that can be used on mobile devices, laptops and PCs, and a database back-end that would develop a storage repository for information collected.

“Once the students delivered the proof of concept, it became obvious to us that we actually had a real chance to take what is today’s search and rescue operations, which are predominantly run by a paper system, and automate them with technology,” said Bloom, who is also financially assisting the project. “An automated system itself will improve search outcomes and it creates the promise down the road of enhancing the data with artificial intelligence and ultimately helping to find people more quickly.”

To assist, Bloom recruited Chris Young (Architectural Engineering ’74), another long-time search and rescue volunteer, who trains people nationwide and has written two books on the topic.

Kurfess said he was fortunate to get two alumni who are experienced in search and rescue, tech and management.

“To me, to some degree, it’s paradise,” Kurfess said. “On one

hand, I have students who want to learn. On the During the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern Califorother hand, I have two people who both know a nia, Bloom said, volunteers were brought in by the lot about search and rescue and who have much hundreds. more practical experience in doing things and get“Pretty much every team in California, plus ting things done than I have.” most of the teams in Oregon, were all at the search For Riley Mete, one of the students, the projand rescue camp,” he said. “At one stage, the local ect has provided a positive outlook on the field, authorities had a list of a thousand-plus missing knowing he can combine his passion for people people.” and ethics with his technical background.

Through the years, search and rescue missions “I am driven by “I am driven by the thought that the product I have evolved. And most of the computer science the thought that the am working on can potentially lead to the finding research work done with search and rescue has of a missing person,” he said. entailed mapping technology and using robots product I am working Fellow student Ryan Chan said he was interand drones in urban settings. But data collection ested to see how leveraging software could impact at the scene is also important for coordination and on can potentially a real-world event generally viewed as a manual sharing insights. lead to the finding process.

When someone is missing, Young said, he will “I’ve personally experienced first-hand the inef- often talk with family members to build a portfolio of a missing person.” ficient, oftentimes slow process of searching for of the missing person’s health and habits in an efmissing persons when an elderly man went missfort to gauge where they might be. Such informaRiley Mete | CSSE Student ing in my hometown,” Chan said, “so being able to tion has historically been entered on paper forms. contribute to a project that would automate and “The quicker we can gather information and speed up these missions seemed like something process that intelligence into something actionthat would prove to be really impactful.” able — that’s where we want to be,” Young said.

Working with Bloom and Young, Mete said, has While students are learning valuable lessons, provided valuable insight. they are also part of what hopes to be a transfor“Gary is able to direct our focus on the impormative movement in search and rescue. tant aspects of this project as well as provide us “There’s a whole new frontier of improvement with an effective gameplay on how this project to search outcomes that comes once all this data should be implemented,” Mete said. “Chris, who is in a computer and we can report on it and run has over 30 years of search and rescue experience, algorithms to enhance the data and find missing has also been able to provide us with extremely people more quickly,” Bloom said. n useful information when it comes to use cases of our product as well as overall insight on the workflow of a typical search and rescue mission.”

In a recent Zoom meeting with students, Bloom — whose experience includes leading tech companies MarkLogic, eMeter and VERITAS software – paired search and rescue lessons with his tech and management experience, at one point noting the need for students to take time to prepare for knowledge transfer for the next group of students.

“At the end of every major phase, we want to know in advance that we’re going to take some time out, push a pause button, and write everything down to prepare for the handoff of the project to the next team,” he told students. “This is something we do in the corporate world all the time.”

Having led large-scale projects in the corporate world, both Bloom and Young have been wellequipped to lead large search and Cal Poly alumnus Gary Bloom, right, seen here during a search and rescue in Belmont, is a retired tech executive rescues across the country. who has volunteered for search and rescue missions since he was a computer science student. He is helping current students develop technology to assist search and rescue volunteers. (Photo courtesy of Gary Bloom) And those efforts can be substantial. csc.calpoly.edu | 11

CSSE News

Computer Science & Software Engineering faculty members Bruno da Silva, left, and BJ Klingenberg have partnered with a nonprofit, Team fEMR, to provide students with a real-world project that would make medical records more accessible in disaster areas.

When Data Saves Lives Students help nonprofit provide crucial medical record system to areas experiencing a crisis

M

ore than a decade after Sarah Draugelis volunteered to help earthquake victims in Haiti, there’s one patient she can’t forget.

A pregnant woman with gestational diabetes needed insulin.

Yet, sadly, the medical tents that volunteers had set up didn’t have any, and the woman died. Later, Draugelis discovered another team had volunteered in that same village a month earlier.

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“Just a simple email that said, ‘Bring insulin’ would have saved her life,” Draugelis said. “It was simple lack of communication.”

The tragedy gave Draugelis and others the idea to create fEMR, an electronic medical record system (EMR) that would make medical records easily accessible during disasters, even in places with no electricity or internet access. And now Cal Poly students are helping to take that technology to the next level.

“I think it’s really interesting that I can use computer science to help people around the world even from my own computer,” said Alex Burke, a student in BJ Klingenberg’s software engineering capstone class.

Since the fall of 2020, faculty members Klingenberg and Bruno da Silva have had their students work with Team fEMR to expand their capabilities.

“This has been a great partnership so far,” Klingenberg said. “I’m so excited for students to create software that actually sees the light of day and is not just an experiment or a prototype that a company wants them to learn but not to execute on.”

After returning from Haiti with a team from her alma mater, Wayne State University, in 2010, Draugelis and two others co-created fEMR (Fast Electronic Record System) and the nonprofit Team fEMR to help facilitate medical care with an open source EMR. The system facilitates continuing care by tracking important medical information about patients, and it allows clinicians to monitor outbreaks, like Covid-19.

“It is a very lightweight, easy-to-use system that allows clinicians to take down pertinent information regarding each clinical visit, much like they would do in a developed clinical setting here in America,” said Draugelis, president of Team fEMR. Traditional EMRs, however, have a different goal in mind, said Andrew Mastie, chief technology officer with fEMR. “They’re designed by hospitals for doctors, where billing is the core,” he said. “When you let your accountants drive your business, it’s great for business, but it’s lousy for patient care.”

EMR’s can be especially crucial in disaster areas, where paper records are often illegible and destroyed or lost.

“Given that the system is deployed to areas without Internet, we send each medical team with a set of networking equipment with which they can create a closed intranet signal, connect their own device, and access the EMR software,” Draugelis said.

Data is entered on devices similar to laptops.

However, all medical data is stored on a server in the field, which means if something happened to the server, the data would be lost.

“One of the major improvements the Cal Poly teams have made to the system is creating a way for the system to connect to the internet and back up the data or update the software,” Draugelis said.

While some Cal Poly students have worked to connect offline and online versions of the system, others are developing a “trauma sheet” that would help clinicians responding to disasters.

That trauma sheet details a patient’s current

medical issues and includes important historical information, such as blood pressure, surgical history and heart rate.

The technology is currently deployed in refugee camps in Mexico, and fEMR is planning to share it with Canadian Medical Assistance Teams, a nonprofit that can deploy anywhere in the world in under 48 hours.

Bat Battur, another student working on the project, said he appreciates getting real-life experience working on a humanitarian effort.

“It’s not just coding,” he said. “It’s more understanding the problem.”

Klingenberg and da Silva plan to continue working with Team fEMR. “The goal is to continue this successful partnership that brings real-world software and computational challenges to the students to work on in their software engineering capstone experience,” da Silva said, “while at the same time they contribute to a solution that will save lives and reduce the burden of finding access to health care in times of crisis.” n

Dr. Mark Ryan, from Virginia Commonwealth University, uses the fEMR system while seeing patients during his annual visit to the Dominican Republic. (Photo courtesy of Team fEMR)

“I think it’s really interesting that I can use computer science to help people around the world even from my own computer.”

Alex Burke | CSSE Student

csc.calpoly.edu | 13

Computer science students work on their startup during the Summer Accelerator program at Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

FOCUS ON THE FUTURE Make a gift to support computer science labs, projects and clubs Click HERE to make a gift now, or contact Amy Blosser Spikes, assistant dean of advancement, at spikes@calpoly.edu or 805-756-2163