Lexington’s KTByte awards Belmont and Acton student first and second place in a programming competition

Ewen Wang, a 9th grader from Belmont, and Sky Li, an 8th grader from Acton, won first ($1000 cash)  and second ($500 cash) prizes respectively from KTByte’s Business and Technology Contest on June 15, 2014.  KTByte, a computer academy based in Lexington, runs competitions for aspiring computer scientists in addition to their camps and classes.  All participants were challenged to produce computer applications with societal benefits. Students submitted rigorous and creative projects across a variety of subjects. These included educational games, media applications, robotics, productivity apps, and more. Four finalists were selected from 20 participants.

Ewen, who is a 2nd year KTByte student, impressed the audience with his project, Actions, which captures and replays computer and keyboard actions (see it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8bGArbqYE8) . Ewen's presentation included a demo of his program being used to automate tasks on the computer such as sending e-mails, opening programs, and changing settings, etc. For example, if you have more than a few computers at home or at work, and a specific setting needed to be changed to be the same on all of them, Ewen’s program could save more than a few hours of manual labor.

Sky, also a 2nd year KTByte student, had a project in robotics and computer vision. He built a robot that could detect objects of various colors with a webcam and move towards them. A program of his concept has the potential to be used in a wide variety of situations. It could, for example, be used in security. The program is set on a specific object of a certain color and if that object were to be moved, the program can produce an output that triggers consequential action.

Other finalists’ projects were equally impressive.  Lenny Zhou, who created a website to play and recommend music, and Rubicon, a conglomerate of students Luke Eriksson, Kenneth Rubenstein and Alex Banks, who made several Android and web games.  Please visit their projects at: https://www.ktbyte.com/showcase (sort by most recent). 

KT Byte, established in 2011 and located in Lexington, MA, provides high quality computer programming classes and camps for novice students, and algorithmic courses for advanced student challenge their mathematical and logical thinking. KTByte has been distinguished for the unique teaching techniques and platforms, which earned first place in Lincoln Labs’ 2013 Virtual Hackathon event. Five of the academy’s students thus far have been placed in the national USACO (USA Computing Olympiad) programming competition, one of the most prestigious computer science competitions in the nation.

KTByte offers fun and challenging camps and weekly classes in the summer for all ages that run from mid-June to the end of August in Lexington, MA.  There are also robotic and Android programming camps in August.  To learn more about KTByte please visit: www.ktbyte.com/.  Or contact them for specific inquires.