Foto: Bax Lindhardt

Young women exploring robots and programming

Information technology IT systems Software and programming Hardware and components
40 young women attended the IT camp at DTU during the mid-term holidays. The camp aimed to spark their curiosity regarding educational and job-related opportunities within this field.

Three days of relaxation during the mid-term holidays were replaced by programming, lectures, and exercises for 40 young women who had chosen to participate in DTU’s IT camp. The majority of the participants were high school students who travelled to DTU from all over Denmark to try their hand at IT.

Associate Professor Inge Li Gørtz from DTU Compute has been in charge of the event, which received more applicants than they could accommodate. Li Gørtz hopes that the three-day camp will spark the young women’s interest in IT:

“If the participants have fun and go home thinking IT is an exciting field to work in, then our IT camp will have been a success. We try to give them an insight into the many different things you can do within IT, and to show them that it’s more than just sitting in front of a screen all day. I hope that the girls have become more open to the fact that studying IT is also an option for them,” says Inge Li Gørtz.

The only girl in high school’s IT class 

Foto: Bax Lindhardt

One of the participants was 18-year-old Lisa Maria Huynh, who is a third-year student at Århus Gymnasium and whose area of study is programming.

“I’m the only girl in my class, so I’m here at the IT camp to meet other girls interested in IT. I’m surprised that we are so many—I had expected there to be much fewer girls. I’m also here to work more in-depth with programming. I think the camp is exciting—especially artificial intelligence and robot technology—and I’m also happy with the lectures. I wouldn’t mind if the camp lasted longer than three days,” says Lisa Maria Huynh.

Programming robots 

Foto: Bax Lindhardt

On the second day of the camp, the participants had the opportunity to learn about socially intelligent robots and to practise programming them. For this purpose, DTU brought out their two Pepper type robots which have been dubbed R2DTU.

In groups of four, the girls enthusiastically tried out codes and crazy ideas that made the robots say hello, react to touch, or respond to knock-knock jokes.

Foto: Bax Lindhardt

This is the second time DTU is hosting an IT camp for young women.

Read more about DTU’s study programmes.