October 28, 2016

The summer after his first year on campus, Theodore Slechta ’17 teamed up with his professor to work on computer vision research.

He would eventually have the chance to present this research at national and regional conferences.

“Presenting at the conferences was wonderful. I got to speak with people who knew about my topic and could speak in an advanced manner about it,” says Slechta, a computer science major who is also minoring in math and music.

With Toshiro Kubota, associate professor of mathematical sciences, Slechta worked on developing a two-step approach to matching photos of similar locations using a special imaging library called Python. He used two techniques known as Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and dense-SIFT, which is a similar matching technique that is more detailed.

In spring 2015, he traveled to Spokane, Wash., to present his research at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR). He also presented his research at the Landmark Conference at Juniata College and the Susquehanna Valley Undergraduate Research Symposium the following year.

After taking an AP computer science class in high school, Slechta found his calling. “Solving various problems by writing code felt natural and was a lot of fun,” he says.

He says he is grateful for all the opportunities faculty have given him and how helpful and approachable they are.

“They all leave their doors open to help, even on topics you’re struggling with that aren’t related to the classes they teach,” he says.