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San Diego Supercomputer Center Interns Create App for UC San Diego’s Stuart Collection

Published March 21, 2024

Screen captures showing thumbnails, maps and detailed information about Stuart Collection installations including "Bear" and "Sun God"

High school students interning at the San Diego Supercomputer Center recently developed an app for the Stuart Collection at UC San Diego.

By Kimberly Mann Bruch, SDSC Communications

A new app called Stuart Collection at UCSD has been developed by high school interns at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego. Created in 1981, the Stuart Collection consists of several creative sculptures throughout the campus that can now be experienced with this new app, which is available via the Google Play store.

“Our student-led Stuart Collection at UCSD app includes an interactive map of the UC San Diego campus – allowing users to experience a feel for campus and explore the Stuart Collection along the way,” explained SDSC Education Manager Ange Mason, who supervised the student project. “Additionally, users of the app can get directions to each sculpture in the collection.”

Students participating in the project were a part of the UCSD Anita Borg Leadership and Engagement (ABLE) program. They were mentored by John VanZandt of CEO Softcenters in San Diego and Phuong Ton of Qualcomm, along with Jane Zwerneman, assistant director for the Stuart Collection.

“I had a great experience working on the app – I was able to work with the other participants as a team, building skills in communication, collaboration and overall being open to the ideas and suggestions of my peers,” said Ethan Tran, a junior at Del Norte High School in San Diego. “One of my tasks was to implement a map feature to show the users the location of the various sculptures in the Stuart Art Collection. I had to research how to do this for Android and learned how to use Google Map APIs that I added to the app.”

After Tran created the basic feature for the app, he then extended it to customize the map pins and additional features. To accomplish this, he researched coordinates for each art piece.

“In order to be more precise, I went on campus to verify the coordinates and also test the app, which was a lot of fun,” Tran said. “Overall, working on the app was a great experience, and it was really rewarding to see it on the Google Play Store.”