Quest Academy, a leading private, independent school for gifted students in Palatine, Il is pleased to announce that four Quest Academy students have been named Summer Interns at the University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering and the FHL Vive Center for Enhanced Reality at UC Berkeley.
The four students, Aria Barve, Hamza Jafri, Jacob Plotnick and Skyelar Reuter will be working remotely as part of a team with Berkeley faculty and graduate students to build autonomous motion vehicles and design an Artificial Intelligence(AI) curriculum for elementary schools. The Quest Academy students were selected based on test scores and their knowledge of Python, Artificial Intelligence and autonomous motion programming. Mr. Stephen Dembo, Quest Academy Director of Technology and Computer Science/AI teacher congratulated the students: “We’re very proud four of our middle school students demonstrated the skills necessary to partner with the UC Berkeley team. These students will learn a great deal this summer and they will have an impact on students across the country as this curriculum is used in other schools.”
The UC Berkeley team is led by Dr. Allen Yang, Ph.D, at the UC Berkeley College of Engineering and Executive Director, FHL Vive Center for Enhanced Reality. At Berkeley, Dr. Yang founded the Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality and Autonomous Driving Master of Engineering research programs. His team has deep experience in AI and autonomous driving and UC Berkeley currently hosts a Robot Open Autonomous Racing (ROAR™) competition three times a year, in Spring, Summer and Fall, respectively.
Dr. Yang first lectured to Quest Academy Middle School students this past spring and then suggested the collaboration. Dr. Yang described the UC Berkeley/Quest partnership in this way: “In our efforts to develop innovative AI curriculum for younger ages as part of our K-12 AI Learning Initiative, it is critical to test and collaborate with highly qualified younger students who can provide meaningful feedback to our teams. We commend these Quest students for their commitment to this project and we look forward to their active participation this summer.”
The Berkeley team and the Quest students will spend the early part of the summer designing and optimizing autonomous driving vehicles.. In July and August, the team will refine programming for the vehicles test a teaching curriculum for elementary school students.
Quest Students Intern at UC Berkeley
Dr Allen Yang — UC Berkeley
