The PIXELS Spring School in IT, offered by the joint UTC-CNRS Heudi­asyc research lab­o­ra­to­ry for sec­ondary school pupils, was held from April 7–10, UTC. A sec­ond edi­tion will address a wide range of top­ics such as Go and Python pro­gram­ming, con­trol and robot­ics, vir­tu­al real­i­ty VR), image clas­si­fi­ca­tion, the lim­its of Chat­G­PT and even ‘com­put­ing with­out computers’.

The PIXELS com­put­er sci­ence school offers young girls and boys the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cov­er com­put­er sci­ence free of charge via a week’s train­ing and prac­ti­cal work. The first edi­tion in June 2023 was launched in response to a call for projects issued by the CNRS Com­put­er Sci­ence Depart­ment at the end of 2022 aimed at sup­port­ing gen­der equal­i­ty ini­tia­tives. “As the equal­i­ty cor­re­spon­dent for the Heudi­asyc lab­o­ra­to­ry, I brought this ini­tia­tive to the lab­o­ra­to­ry lev­el. The 2023 edi­tion was a resound­ing suc­cess, with 90 appli­ca­tions for 20 places avail­able. We there­fore wel­comed 20 high school stu­dents from the Hauts-de-France region”, recalls Hélène Bal­let, com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer at the Heudi­asyc lab­o­ra­to­ry. PIXELS is there­fore aimed at high school stu­dents in their sec­ond to final year. It is at this age that ques­tions about edu­ca­tion­al and career choic­es begin to arise, and our goal is to increase and pro­mote com­put­er sci­ence, espe­cial­ly among young women. So high school stu­dents seem to be a good tar­get audi­ence. Even though we are aware that aware­ness of sci­ence needs to start at an ear­ly age.

A rich and varied programme

The aim of the pro­gramme is to pro­vide as com­pre­hen­sive an overview as pos­si­ble of the sub­jects that the lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tists work on at Heudi­asyc and, espe­cial­ly, of research in com­put­er sci­ence. “For the first edi­tion, we were there­fore able to offer work­shops on robot­ics and con­trol, vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR), pro­gram­ming and the world of secret codes (cryp­tog­ra­phy), image pro­cess­ing, and also show that com­put­er sci­ence can be per­formed even with­out a PC. We also want young peo­ple to not think of com­put­er sci­en­tists as ‘geeks’ when they think of researchers, but to see the range of activ­i­ties and research pos­si­ble in this field, as well as the dif­fer­ent careers avail­able in research, such as engi­neers, researchers and teach­ers.’ This year, the pro­gramme will be almost iden­ti­cal to that of 2023, with a few new addi­tions: image clas­si­fi­ca­tion and the lim­its of Chat­G­PT and an intro­duc­tion to Go pro­gram­ming. There will also be more fun and infor­mal activ­i­ties, includ­ing vis­its to three major tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms: robot­ics, immer­sive sim­u­la­tion and intel­li­gent vehi­cles, as well as a team-build­ing activ­i­ty for the students.

Young people and IT: an important issue

“In the IT depart­ment, only 25.5% of stu­dents are female, and we want to increase this pro­por­tion. So we are car­ry­ing out var­i­ous aware­ness-rais­ing and sci­en­tif­ic medi­a­tion activ­i­ties aimed at young peo­ple to show them that sci­ence is not just for men. In 2021, I led the ARI²A project enti­tled ‘Women in research in infor­ma­tion and dig­i­tal sci­ences’ at UTC,’ says Hélène Bal­let, who is also organ­is­ing a sci­en­tif­ic con­fer­ence with pre­sen­ta­tions by female researchers from acad­e­mia and indus­try who will talk about their careers, fol­lowed by a round table dis­cus­sion on their expe­ri­ences. Not to men­tion the video por­traits of female research sci­en­tists work­ing at the Heudi­asyc laboratory.

KD