MY Camper Changping Chen: ICT to help solve crimes
17-year old Changping Chen from China is interested in computer science and data mining. In his project plan, he contemplates the idea of using web crawlers and robotic software to solve missing child cases.
Changping Chen from China.
17-year-old Changping Chen or 陈昌平 is from China, and studies at Shenzhen Middle School, one of the top public schools in Shenzhen. He heard about MY Camp from his physics teacher and then googled some more information about it.
“I expect that MY Camp will be an unique opportunity to meet talented people from all over the world. That’s one of the unique experiences that only this camp can offer”, he says and adds that he is looking forward meeting especially his fellow members in ICT group, all of whom represent exotic countries to him.
Changping is interested in computer science, data mining in particular. “The massive data we have today is of great value. Exploiting the data and building statistics can really help us in macro decisions. For example, sentiment analysis reveals our attitudes on different topics that can be observed to change over time. It’s very helpful in business and marketing,” Changping says.
Changping says he has no role models in the field of computing as most of the things he is inspired by are done by the open source community. “One usually speaks to a person once and never contacts them again. But everyone is warm-hearted and helpful and all the people that I’ve talked to combined create this ideal role model in my mind.”
Changping’s project plan for the second phase of MY Camp application is about a robotic software that automatically searches information regarding missing children in China.
“My school is old and located near a shopping area where a lot of minors, probably all under the age of ten, beg on the streets. These innocent kids are said to be controlled by organized criminals that exploit kids to sell flowers. Sadly, this has been like this for years as far as I know and the police couldn’t care less,” Changping says.
According to Changping, U.S. State Department has estimated that 55 children are abducted in China every day, and most of them end up to child labour or begging in the streets. “And the most shocking thing to me is that there’s absolutely no Chinese terminology referring to ‘child abuse and neglect’. Imagine 7-year-old girls without adequate food and clothing begging on the street in front Helsinki train station and no one cares.”
“I had built web crawlers and robotic software before and I thought the same principals can be applied also to resolving missing child cases.”
Chanping does programming on his spare time, and has plans on applying to study computer science in the United States after high school.
“My dream school is University of California, Berkeley. I have thought about majoring in computer science and minoring in linguistics and I’ll probably pursue a career in technology. But it may change in the future,” he says.
Have a look at Changping’s project plan: A Robotic System for Reunification of Abducted Children Project Plan.
Like during the previous years, MyScience will introduce each MY Camper and offer news, videos and photos during the Camp. Stay tuned, but in the meantime watch videos and photos from MY Camp 2010 and MY Camp 2011.
Read more about Millennium Youth Camp from Finland’s Science Education Centre LUMA’s website.
Elisa Lautala works as web editor for University of Helsinki's Faculty of Science. Elisa likes all kinds of cultural events, good books, warm weather, and aqua-jogging.