Junior Jason Scharff traveled to Israel to study computer science. Photo courtesy SciTech Summer Camp.

Amanda Crisci | Co-Spread Editor

If you have had a problem with your computer at school, have worked with tech on one of the school musicals, or have seen some of the computer science projects, you have probably come across junior Jason Scharff. Scharff spent part of his summer at Technion University in Israel studying computer science. The program Scharff attended was called SciTech and was based around the study of science technology. Scharff’s project ended up being the only computer science related project out of everyone in the program. According to Scharff, most of the projects were centered around building medical technology, or improving the technology already used in various medical practices. This program ran for three and a half weeks and the students who attended met with professionals in the field of technology to help develop projects they’d work on for the duration of the program.
Scharff first became interested in computer science when he was in fourth grade, but became passionate and heavily involved in the subject in seventh grade. He heard about the SciTech program through his older sister, who had done the program herself eight years prior. Scharff still had to go through a rigorous application process before being selected for the advanced program.

Coat of Arms: What is one unique experience you had there? Any cool cultural or social things you were a part of or witnessed? 

Jason Scharff: It was really interesting to learn about Israeli culture. At the program were both Jewish and Arab Israelis so it was interesting to learn about some of the tensions between the two groups first hand. I also had some pretty great Israeli food.

COA: Can you describe your project?

JS: [It was on] image segmentation, which is basically separating different components of images, like a background and a foreground, or a rural area from and urban area.

COA: What is the biggest skill you learned or improved on during the program? Was there a specific skill the program was meant to develop?

JS: The skill depends on the project. My project was on computer vision, which is basically using computers to understand images. In particular I focused on image segmentation, which is segmenting out particular areas in an image. I learned a lot about image processing and computer vision, which I didn’t know anything about before. 

COA: What advice would you give to someone who was thinking of going into computer science or wanted to try computer science?

JS: Take an introduction course and just build, build, build. If you find it really fun to use computers to build cool things after making a bunch of random programs it may be for you. 

Check back in tomorrow afternoon for the final installment of Summer Profiles!