News

The Student Experience Office is actively recruiting Assistant Leads and Volunteers to help the University welcome the incoming class of 2028. The University-wide Orientation consists of events open to incoming students in all departments, offered at no cost, that run during the first few days of orientation week. Returning students can apply for two roles – Welcome Team Volunteer and Welcome Team Assistant Leads. There are many openings available on this team, and it is a great opportunity to revisit the campus and welcome the new cohort of students.

Computing Orientation is going to continue to run as a separate event, and starting this year the event will be fully run by the Queen’s Computing Students’ Association (COMPSA). The new COMPSA executive team have been hard at work preparing the biggest and most exciting event to date. If you want to help COMPSA with the event, please consider making a donation to the School to support their work.

The Graduate Computing Society (GCS) is collecting donations for the Health Promotion’s Fresh Food Box program.

This initiative is helping provide free meal kits to graduate Computing students who are struggling with the recent spike in the cost of living and grocery prices. GCS is offering 60 free fresh food boxes to graduate computing students over the course of the summer. 

The Health Promotion Hub at Queen’s started the Fresh Food Box program in 2019, but this is the first time GCS is organizing a Fresh Food Box registration specifically for Computing students. The cost of each box is $10.00, and each box contains ingredients to make a fresh and simple recipe of 4-6 servings.

The current iteration of the program will be offered on May 23rd, but GCS is hopeful that with consistent donations they will be able to continue offering the program in June and July.

Health Promotion’s fantastic student staff help choose the recipe, acquire the ingredients, and pack the boxes, making it truly a “for students, by students” initiative.

Donations can be made following this link: https://givetoqueens.ca/schoolofcomputing

Queen’s School of Computing congratulates PhD student Hebatalla Ouda on being selected as the SGPS Teaching Assistant/Teaching Fellow Excellence Award winner!

Hebatalla is a teaching assistant and research assistant at the Telecommunications Research Lab (TRL). Her MSc degree is also from Queen’s, focusing on research in IoT/ Big Data for real-time monitoring applications in the healthcare domain.

Hebatalla is not only dedicated to her research, but also continuously and diligently shows support to the University community, and to the broader professional network. Hebatalla worked as an executive coordinator in ESAQ (Egyptian Students Association at Queen’s) and as a COMPSA Liaison Officer at the Graduate Computing Society at Queen’s. Hebatalla is part of the CS-CAN/Info-CAN network and a regular at the CAN-CWiC conference. Hebatalla also volunteered many hours of work to be part of the panel of judges at the latest Creative Computing event. Hebatalla is active in the graduate community and is always there to support other students, provide personable, attentive instruction as a TA, and represent the School at outreach events.

In 2023, Hebatalla received the School of Computing Excellence in Teaching TA Award.

Congratulations, Hebatalla, for this well-deserved honour!

Another incredible event! Thank you to the 55 teams of Computing students for presenting your technological artwork, video games, and research projects.

Some of the vide game demos from the showcase are available on our Twitch channel.

Award Winners

Queen’s School of Computing, with the support of our sponsor Electronic Arts (EA) Inc., was honored to present the following awards: 

Best Project 

Joelle Lintag, Bianca Bucchino, Dallas Doherty, Molly Stewart, Sydney Shereck

for project Textile Interfaces and User Experience (UX) of Tactile Interaction

Best Art Project 

Dayna Corman ,Adam Sun, Maya Pejatta, Christine Ma 

for project Resuscitation Rescue 

Best Videogame

Osamudiamen Adun, Stefan D’Ippolito, Rebecca De Venezia, Daniel Madan, Jayden Ting  

for project Stellar Synergy 

and

Amanda Li, Alyssa Zhao, Savannah Han, Cynthia Wang, Kristen Lee 

for project Time Flies By 

Gallery

The 2024 edition of QHacks took place this February and hosted almost double the number of hackers and brought in the most funding compared to previous years. We interviewed Ethan Wang, Marketing Officer of QHACKS 2024 about the event.

In your opinion, what made this event so successful?

The main reason for our success this year is that we went the extra mile in utilizing our past connections and experiences to secure as much funding as possible. Hosting a 3-day event of this scale is extremely expensive, so it was very important for us to reach out to a variety of sponsors well in advance to ensure we had enough funding to run the event. We also did plenty of training to get better at networking and to ensure our team knew how to talk to potential sponsors and get them on board.

The time pressure of a hackathon can be intimidating to some students who haven’t experienced this environment before. How do you ensure a supportive and collaborative environment for all?

As organizers, we’re committed to making QHacks welcoming for everybody, regardless of their level of experience. Every year, we bring in mentors to ensure participants have the support they need to do well, even if they’re new to coding. We also offer a variety of workshops during the event that cater to different skill sets, so everybody can find something that helps them grow and engage effectively.

What advice would you give to somebody who is interested in participating next year, but doesn’t know what to expect?

If you’re considering participating in QHacks next year but are uncertain about what to expect, our advice is to just do it and apply. We’ve seen so many students secure amazing internships as a result of their involvement, in addition to creating impressive projects that serve as valuable work experience. Beyond the professional benefits, you’ll have the opportunity to meet like-minded individuals, learn new skills, and challenge yourself in a dynamic environment.

What were your key takeaways from the event? What inspired you/made you feel the proudest?

We found that our executive team was able to succeed through adversity, having faced numerous challenges in getting funding. With the assistance of faculties such as Queen’s Computing, ECE, and FEAS, we managed to secure a budget that exceeded this year’s expenses, meaning not only were we able to run this year’s event, but future events will have more funding available to them. A source of pride for us was the positive feedback we received from our sponsors, with us engaging with the large community that exists in the Queen’s Engineering, Commerce and Computing faculties, as well as the largest participant turnout in the post-pandemic era.

This year’s theme was “Unlocking the Future with AI”, and the speaker panel featured prominent leaders in the AI industry. What are some ideas from QHacks 2024 that could have a significant impact on shaping our future?

For QHacks 2024, we had many prize categories that were related to artificial intelligence to help promote our main theme, as well as the inclusion of different levels of knowledge throughout the student body. AI has been a prevalent topic in the tech industry, and we believe that it was something we needed to promote amongst participants of the largest hackathon at Queen’s. We discovered that many students were interested in creating innovative projects using OpenAI API and GPT-4 solutions that would be amazing business ideas. These projects opened avenues in education, sports, global sustainability, accessibility, and many other industries. Our judges encouraged novel, ethical, and beneficial projects, and our first-place winners, LeafHack, created an application that “leverages computer vision to detect the health of plants, providing real-time feedback on plant health, and thus allowing homeowners to intervene promptly and nurture a thriving garden”. This project demonstrates the significance of the initiative existent at an event where young talent can create modern tech solutions.

Emese Elkind’s Team won 3rd place at the Ingenuity Labs Research Institute’s 2024 Next Generation of Medical Simulation Hackathon. At this hackathon, students from diverse backgrounds, in 16 teams, presented their ideas using a technical and scientific approach to solve the challenge: “Advanced fidelity of medical simulators or task trainers in a way that will allow learners in healthcare to optimize their skills before they are needed at the bedside.”

Emese and teammates Jade Warren, Aden Wong, and Réna Hajjar presented a project on injection administration training. The project was aimed to enhance the training process for injection administration and was inspired by the group’s visit to the Queen’s School of Medicine labs.  Using optical tracking and open-source software, specifically 3DSlicer, the team created a visual guidance tool that helps students learn to administer injections at the correct needle angle, for optimal patient comfort and safety.

Congratulations, Emese and team!

A team of Computing students won at the January Social Innovation Hackathon hosted by the Smith Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Social Impact.

Participants worked in teams to create innovative solutions for a challenge provided by the organization participating in the event. The challenge was “Can an app help improve the supply chain for locally grown produce?” All the teams put their skills to the test designing an app inspired by GreenReach Farms, a Kingston-based company that delivers year-round crops to the community.

Congratulations to the winning team from QSC for creating the winning design and receiving a $2,000 prize!

Dr. Sara Nabil was invited by the First Peoples Innovation Centre (FPIC) in Quebec to give a workshop to Indigenous Women as part of the Feminin FabLab program . Her workshop was on incorporating e-textile circuit design within the local traditional practice of hand sewing and regalia embroidery.

Dr. Nabil’s visit was part of an ongoing partnership that her team successfully established with this innovation center’s Fabrication Lab. This initiative invites Indigenous participants from their communities to expand and exchange learning, skills and potentials.

Dr. Nabil shared multiple resources with the attendants, including specialized hardware components and both online and offline references. This collaboration highlights the importance of active relationship-building and collaboration in teaching and learning environments withing computing.