Kathleen Kanemoto
Position: Coordinator and Professor of Computer Science
Bio
Kathy Kanemoto has been teaching Computer Science at Merced College since 2009, and is currently also the Coordinator of Computer Science at Merced College. She has instructed and mentored many students during that time and implemented the Computer Science (CS) Associate Transfer and Computer Technology & Information Systems (CTIS) Associate Degrees. She also created Drone Technology, Drone Media, and CTIS Certificated pathways as a means to bring equity into Computational Science fields. She is interested in drones as a means to bring real-life applications into the classroom as a means to bridge the gap into research, computer science, and ag-tech. She is also into researching new ways of teaching Computer Science and building Computational Science pathways for students to achieve their CS certificates and degrees and become successful Computer Scientists. Here is a link to her website that explains more on these pathways: http://cspathways.us/
Keywords
- Computer Science
- Drone Technology
- Ag Technology
- Creating CS pathways
- Teaching and Learning CS
- Student Equity
In the News
- UAV-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Kathy currently has her FAA remote pilot certificate, and works under a COA to fly at the Merced College campus and farm. She currently teaches drone technology classes; where students fly drones, build an Arduino payload, collect data and do data analysis and programming. Merced College is a member of the FAA Collegiate Technical Initiative (CTI) program, and works collaboratively with UC Merced on student projects and classes. She attends Ag Tech conferences, Drone camps, symposiums, data collection events, and other related drone events to stay up to date in current trends, rules, and technology. She is currently implementing Drone Media classes to be taught as Dual Enrollment at the local High Schools as a means for those students to have a pathway into Computation Science and exposure to research.
- CPS- Cyberphysical Systems: Kathy has worked with Arduinos, Rasberry Pis, sensors, robots, and other hardware components in the classroom for several years. Kathy is currently doing research in the area of using sUAS as the means of spraying orchards, and creating an algorithm to assess and compare the efficiency of sUAS to other ag sprayers. This will involve flying, mapping, and programming the drones to spray in a physical system, and collecting measurable, comparable efficiency spray and flight data. It will involve using image recognition software to measure droplet density, measuring other efficiency factors, creating an algorithm to compute efficiency based on that input. and a program to perform what-if analysis to find when it would be useful to use UAS over other means of spraying, when a farmer can expect a return on investment.
