Drones and simulations: discovering IT at USI

Some thirty students from Mendrisio Secondary School had the opportunity to spend a day in the world of technology at USI's Faculty of Informatics.

Two classes, one from the 3rd year and one from the 4th year secondary school, accompanied by two lecturers, attended in parallel a workshop on simulations in Python with Patrick Zulian (postdoc at the Eulero Institute) and Sasha Toscano (1st year student of the Bachelor in Informatics), and one on drone programming held by Roberto Minelli (academic coordinator of the Software Institute) and Andrea Brites Marto (2nd year student of the Master in Software and Data Engineering). The two workshops lasted six hours, with a first part in the morning and a second part in the afternoon interspersed with a lunch offered by USI. During the day, students were able to delve into one of the two topics, computational scientific simulations and drone programming, and experience first-hand what they had learned during the day.

“The day definitely exceeded my expectations," Roberto Minelli told us. "The students were very interested in the world of drones and worked hard to complete all the exercises they were assigned. I think that organising these days is fundamental for promoting our university and attracting potential students interested in a career in computing.”

“During the workshop, students were able to experience first-hand the challenges of creating numerical simulations from a mathematical model," adds Patrick Zulian. "Between code and differential equations, the obstacles to capturing the dynamics of a physical system were many; but the satisfaction was high when everything started to work correctly.”