BFOIT, the Berkeley Foundation for Opportunities in Information Technology, is wrapping up its Summer Institute, providing education and mentoring to local youths interested in pursuing information technology careers.

During the summer program, young people attend classes in computer science, information technology, and related topics, and meet professors from Cal. According to BFOIT director Orpheus Crutchfield, BFOIT serves 60 middle school and high school students annually. The program includes SCI-FY (Science for Youth) for middle school, ITLP (Information Technology Leadership Program) for high school, and the TRUST (Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology) BFOIT High School Research Internship program.

This year, six students participated in TRUST BFOIT High School Research Internships. The students, graduates from previous BFOIT programs, had the opportunity to intern at ICSI and UC Berkeley. Alexis Conway and Isha Doshi created a video focused on privacy issues for young people, under the direction of Julia Bernd and Bryan Morgan. Ahbi Gupta and Diego Lazares worked on computer vision research with Professor Dawn Song, and Alankrita Dayal and Haji Conda had the opportunity to work with Professor Ruzena Bajcsy.

On Friday, August 8, students from the BFOIT summer programs participated in a celebration of another successful Summer Institute, held in Soda Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. The event included a display of middle school poster projects, SCI-FY presentations, TRUST BFOIT high school research project presentations, and ITLP presentations.

Orpheus Crutchfield, director of BFOIT, said, “The industry continues to struggle to include underrepresented groups, as was evidenced by the diversity statistics from Google, Facebook and Twitter.  Our many projects, the Summer Institute presently, are helping to build a pipeline to expose girls and other racial/ethnic minorities to the opportunities in information technology.  Specifically, the TRUST BFOIT Research Internship is supplying a rare opportunity to gain exposure to real, practical research. It can only happen with the support of people willing to mentor these young people- thanks to Julia, Brian, Gerald, and the full administrative team at ICSI for supporting BFOIT!”

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About BFOIT: BFOIT was born in 1998 when the Industrial Advisory Board of U.C. Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department recommended that a private entity be created to address the lack of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in information technology fields in California post-secondary schools and to assist area schools in increasing opportunities for minority and female students and diversifying information technology fields.

About SCI-FY: SCI-FY works with twenty-five middle school students between the 6th and 8th grades. These youth are self-motivated and are on their way to becoming future engineers, technologists, scientists, and leaders of our global community. SCI-FY facilitates the development of skills in problem solving, teamwork, lifelong learning, multiple ways of communicating, and technological literacy. The two-week summer institute is designed to train students in the process of inventing technologies and computer programming. They meet with professional experts, academics, and researchers in the fields of information technology, computer science, science, mathematics, and engineering. These professionals come from the educational, nonprofit, economic, social, and political sectors.

About ITLP: The Information Technology Leadership Program (ITLP) educates and trains middle and high school students in technology topics and leadership skills, gives them the necessary tools to be successful in their quest for higher education, and breaks down barriers that have traditionally thwarted achievement. The intent is to provide youth with knowledge, resources, practical programming skills and guidance in their pursuit of higher education and production of technology.