Page 8 - 2021 OIT Progress Report

without Guillermo Vazquez’ internet-of-things awesomeness, is designed to allow someone to ‘wear’ a robot that essentially tweets out well- vetted information and advice based on where the wearer is at and what they’re doing. Dr. Godat’s team also created a space where my students ...
can send in tweets that offer their research-backed advice to the public. Through this, we can offer ideas for solutions that are crowdsourced from the SMU community, and vetted by research—which is very cool.”
included involvement in Python, database management, Internet-of-Things devices, and software application programming interfaces (APIs). They also taught workshops on data science basics like Python programming, text mining, and data analysis. This data analysis expertise was further put to work on a Cox School of Business eCommerce web-scraping research project.
The STARs are also helping to shape the future of High-Performance Computing (HPC) at SMU.
In addition to the Research
and Data Sciences team, OIT
revitalized the STAR program.
Formed in 1998, the SMU
Student Technology Assistant
in Residence (STAR) program
was initially tasked to assist
faculty with instructional
technology. Staffed with
exceptional students with proficiencies in leading technologies, the program has been a great success for many years. They now work closely with the Research and Data Science team as well as the ATSDs with a broadened mission to support not only instructional technology needs, but to also cater to research-specific needs of faculty.
STAR students assisted in the production of the Twitter bot for the Green Jacket Project, which
Utilizing small NVIDIA® JetsonTM single-board computers, a special project team worked to create a computing cluster to be used as a teaching aid for HPC courses as well as the possibility of promoting our upcoming HPC, ManeFrame III.
The Office of Information Technology continues to improve research services
and support regularly. This includes workshops catering to specific faculty needs, providing more on-staff data scientists, continuing to leverage the experience of STAR students, and equipping our ATSDs to provide excellent customer service to our faculty and researchers.
We can offer ideas for solutions that are crowdsourced from the SMU community, and vetted by research— which is very cool.
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