Background on Dr. Orban:
“Ever since high school I was fascinated by the power of computers to gain insight into scientific problems. As an undergrad and a grad student I dove into computational astrophysics, studying how galaxies form in an expanding universe. After finishing my Ph.D. I switched gears to focus on simulating ultra-intense laser interactions which is an interesting field with a number of potential applications (as recognized by the 2018 Nobel prize!). In the course of doing this research I would often meet aspiring undergrads who wanted to do computational physics research, but who had no prior coding experience. So in 2017 I created the STEMcoding project (http://youtube.com/c/STEMcoding) to introduce students to using a computer to solve scientific problems starting as early as middle or high school. From an education research perspective there is still a lot that we do not know about the effectiveness of introducing computation into science and mathematics classes. So it has been especially gratifying to contribute to this field and work with teachers as computer science becomes increasingly widespread in the education system.”
Links to STEMforAll video showcase submissions from 2018 and 2019:
https://stemforall2018.videohall.com/presentations/1270
https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentations/1414