CSEd Week!

I'm participating in Computer Science Education Week! It's a movement to get people involved in promoting CS education at a grass-roots level. Although it's set for the week of Grace Hopper's birthday (Dec 9-15), you can participate at any time that's good for you. This is great for me, because that is my finals and graduation week! Get more info and pledge your support at http://www.csedweek.org/.

I plan to blog about my views on CS education as a university student who has been involved in several outreach projects. My main goal is to create a list of resources for teachers to incorporate CS into their classrooms, which can be distributed at teacher fairs and other outreach events. Let me know if you have ideas!

Archaeogingrichasaur

From Newt's YouTube page:

Dinosaurs! What! 

Googling reveals that liberal websites have documented some of Former Speaker Gingrich's mentions of dinosaurs. I think the best of all is this tweet from about a year ago. 

Source

The attempt to show humility by putting a T-Rex skull in one's office is just so Newt.

The blur of Singapore

I just returned from a semester studying at the National University of Singapore. It's a vibrant place, with tonnes of activities, motivated students, and funky British spelling. Perhaps the things I'll remember the most are my frustration at the multilevel, bus-linked, maze-like campus and my amazement at the subsidized textbooks and food. I had had high hopes for my classes, because of the global stature of the university and its breadth in research. A school that has a sizable computational biology department and a world-class Centre for Quantum Technologies must do a pretty good job training its undergrads, I thought. As it turned out, my lecturers left a whole lot to be desired, and my best experiences on campus were extracurricular cultural activities I signed up for — archery lessons, exploration of buddhist texts with a former monk, an inter-faculty ping-pong tournament, being in a short video shoot with a pair of amateur filmmakers, and meeting undergraduates from Delhi to Denmark.

After the break, a few photos that give an overview of the semester.

New-to-you blog!

In a mad rush of motivation, I have re-designed my blog, deleted my few old posts, and subscribed to a smattering of scientific feeds. My goal is to use my blog to learn more about computational biology, as well as another interest of mine, the gender inequality in computer science. With luck, I can make some improvements to my scientific writing in the process!