ITHACA, N.Y. -- If you want to see what computers will be doing for us tomorrow, take a look at what students are doing with them today.

BOOM, or Bits On Our Minds, is an annual show organized by the Cornell University Department of Computer Science and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, but which involves students from all over the campus displaying their computing projects. The fifth annual show will take up parts of three floors of Upson Hall from 4 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6. The students will be on hand to explain their work, and many exhibits will include interactive displays.

"The purpose is to show off the talents of our students, and for members of the department to find out about the breadth of research going on at Cornell," said Stephen Vavasis, associate professor of computer science, who chairs the event. About half of the exhibits will be graduate and undergraduate research projects being pursued for credit, but many will be ideas that students are pursuing on their own in their spare time, he said.

Between 40 and 50 projects will be exhibited, with over 100 students expected to participate. Applications to exhibit are still being accepted, and interested students can apply on the BOOM web site at http://www.cs.cornell.edu/boom/default.htm .

Projects shown in previous years have included computer-composed music, face-recognition technology, online education, virtual reality, math and physics applications, and a variety of games, simulations and robots.

For those who can't make it to Upson, this year's show also will have a virtual version. Every project will have its own web page, accessible through the BOOM front page.

BOOM '02 is sponsored by Credit Suisse/First Boston and Verizon.

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