Visualizing the abstract: A life in computer science
Programming has fascinated senior computer science and engineering major Walter Menendez since he was 10, and he first got his hands on the Mega Man franchise of video games. One game, in particular, features sentient avatars that could traverse a physical representation of the Internet, a virtual world in which “life is the same as technology,” Menendez recalls. Since that early exposure to augmented reality, it’s been a field he’s chased — and one that he finally got his hands on as an undergraduate at MIT. Before he could get to the good stuff, though, Menendez had to make the rounds through basic programming and Web development. During his freshman year, he worked alongside then-graduate student Anthony DeVincenzi on a project to make data more social and accessible. As part of the Tangible Media Group in the MIT Media Laboratory, Menendez helped build a Web app where people could upload geospatial...