By Vidur Prasad
The
Dayton Regional STEM School has a variety of partnerships with companies and
universities to give students the opportunity to work in the real world. One company,
Aptima, Inc., accepted two students as interns last summer, where students
even worked on drone technology!
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The Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS) has
always strived to give students the opportunity to interact with local companies
and organizations to gain experience in the professional world and fulfill the
slogan, “The Real World Starts Here.” One of these partnerships is with the local
defense contractor, Aptima, Inc. Two DRSS students, Keaton Bonds and Vidur
Prasad, were given the opportunity to work at Aptima during the summer of 2015
on real world applications to help Aptima, and the Air Force Research Laboratory.
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Keaton Bonds worked on creating a game-like
simulation to determine how people can handle working on multiple tasks at the
same time. He collaborated with researchers at Aptima to implement software to
allow the Air Force to gain a better understanding of how people’s performance,
such as drone pilots, is affected when they must complete a multitude of tasks
at the same time. Keaton has said that he has enjoyed the experience, and will
continue studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan.
Vidur Prasad collaborated with Aptima to
create a system to determine the amount of workload placed on drone pilots by
looking at the complexity in video footage. Since high workload can degrade performance, and drone pilots often have
to stare at video footage for hours at a time, Vidur created software to estimate the complexity in a video by looking at the number of
people, amount of motion, and other features in the video, allowing the Air
Force to reduce the workload on pilots in real time. He said, “The main thing
that attracted me to DRSS was the opportunity to apply what I learned in class
in a real life setting, such as at Aptima.”
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DRSS has a graduation requirement that
gives all students the opportunity to complete an internship, allowing students
to gain experience in the real world. It is this facet of DRSS—that real world
experience is baked into the curriculum—that many students find so attractive
about the school. In addition, the partnership with companies, such as Aptima,
extends further than just internships. In the past, Aptima has sent judges for
the DRSS Science Fair, giving students valuable feedback and critique on their
projects. Amazing opportunities have come over the past several years, and will
follow for the future, because of our partnership with Aptima; the Dayton
Regional STEM School would like to thank them for everything that they have
done!
