Johnny Borbone arrived at Connecticut College in Fall 2008 intending to major in visual arts while also fulfilling pre-med requirements. He had considered attending both art institutions as well as massive research universities, but decided that a small liberal arts college like Conn was the best place for him “to get med school foundations and the hard core art curriculum.”
However, now in his junior year, Borbone is a proudly declared computer science major and a member of the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology (C@T). This shift of interest occurred the summer before his freshman year, when in a fateful and rebellious act, he refused to enroll in a freshman seminar. Upon arriving at Conn, Borbone was placed in the only seminar that had vacancies: Intro to Robotics.
Having no background in robotics or computer science, Borbone was less than thrilled with his assigned seminar. “I thought, ‘this is going to suck, I’m going to hate it,’” he recalled, “but it turned out to be awesome.”
As the year went on, Borbone found himself less interested in his biology and chemistry classes and more fascinated by the study of robotics. In fact, he enjoyed the subject so much that rather than pursuing his pre-med requirements, Borbone decided to take on Advanced Robotics the next semester.
Recently, Borbone published his research on flight and wing dynamics in regards to ornithopters. First proposed by Leonardo da Vinci, an ornithopter is a machine that achieves flight by flapping, much like a bird. In the past, ornithopters have been unsuccessful in aviation. Borbone explained the reason for their failure is that their wings only move vertically up and down, while a bird’s wings move in “six degrees of freedom.” In his research, Borbone simulated flight with an ornithopter he designed that moves its wings in four degrees of freedom.
On Sunday, September 26, Johnny Borbone returned home from an eight day trip to Japan, where he presented his publication to researchers, company representatives and students at the World Automation Congress (WAC). The WAC took place in Kobe, the sixth largest city in Japan. Borbone was accompanied by Connecticut College professor of computer sciences Gary Parker, as well as Tatsuro Alpert ’11.
“Presenting in Japan was absolutely phenomenal,” said Borbone. At the WAC, there were conferences on topics from aviation to genetic algorithms to smart homes. While not at the conference, Borbone was able to travel to Tokyo and Kyoto to go sightseeing. His travels were made significantly easier by the fact that Alpert, having grown up in Japan, is completely fluent in Japanese.
Despite his interest and talent in computer sciences, Borbone assures me that he is “not one of those computer geeks who wants to sit on a computer and write code every day.” Rather, Borbone wants “to get out and work with people, maybe go into IT.” For his internship this summer, Borbone plans on applying to businesses such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch to work in Information Technology or companies like Google and IBM to work in programming.
(Image credit: http://www.techfresh.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/wall-e-dancing-robot-plays-mp3s.jpg)
