On Thursday, March 4, more than 300 high school students, parents and teachers were on the Georgia Tech campus for “Cool Computing,” an event held to showcase all the “cool” things taking place in computing research, academics and industry.

Students began their day with a welcome talk by Barb Ericson, director of outreach, and Cedric Stallworth, assistant dean of outreach, enrollment and community. They then rotated through three activities, including a student panel, corporate panel and a campus tour that focused on the College of Computing buildings. During the student panel, a small group of current Computer Science and Computational Media undergraduates answered questions about the College and the Institute from the student perspective. John LaBanca of Google and Reza Ghorieshi, both College of Computing alumni, led the corporate panel and shared their experiences working for Google, IBM and as entrepreneurs. The group ended the day with a research talk by Dr. Frank Dellaert about digital special effects. He also demoed several of the projects from the DVFX course.