Calgary, AlbertaNotebook open

I teach children to build things with code—and understand what they built.

I’m Eugene Vlasov. I have spent most of my life moving between science, computers, hardware, and experiments. These days I’m building School of Code Calgary.

What I’m building Write to Eugene

Cartoon portrait of Eugene Vlasov with a determined expression — Surviving artifact An earlier cartoon approximation. Retained on purpose until a real photograph arrives.

Now / School of Code Calgary

Learning code by making something real.

School of Code Calgary is where Eugene brings classical foundations and creative anarchy into the same room. Children write programs, build mechanisms, ask why they failed, and try again.

The groups are small—four students. Classes are 90 minutes. There is time to think, explain, take things apart, and discover that the boat is allowed.

Visit School of Code Calgary

04: students in a group
90: minutes to make and understand
∞: reasonable questions

Field notes / a thematic history

The route was never a straight line.

It was closer to a workbench: one subject left a tool behind for the next one.

Science first

Physics, pharmacy, biology, chemistry, statistics, and experimental design taught Eugene to look closely, measure carefully, and distrust a result that cannot survive a second question.

Computers became practical

Programming began early. Later came business systems, forms, databases, local networks, printers, modems, and the useful art of finding which cable is lying.

Data joined research

R opened a path into research programming and scientific data: not data as decoration, but as material to clean, question, model, and explain.

Then the hardware answered back

Arduino boards, Raspberry Pis, sensors, pumps, cameras, robots, and plants made the programs physical. Physical programs are excellent critics.

Along the way

A few places where the work became real.

Not a chronology. Just evidence from the notebook.

University of Calgary

Research programming at the Calgary Metabolomics Research Facility, where scientific questions arrived attached to complicated data.

Resistell

Research data and algorithm work connected to faster antibiotic-susceptibility testing.

Cybera

Participation in the Data Science Fellowship, contributing analysis to a collaborative public-interest project.

Palace of Youth Art and Science

Teaching robotics and programming—and learning again how much a student understands when asked to explain the machine.

Tom Umber

Founding and building an agricultural-automation project around cameras, sensors, software, and plants.

Selected experiments

Projects begin with “what if?”

Some become software. Some become lessons. Some become a heavily observed tomato plant.

Plant / 001

The heavily observed tomato

A minimum viable greenhouse condensed to one plant: sensors, pumps, a Raspberry Pi, software, and enough attention to make the tomato self-conscious.

Raspberry Pi
Sensors
Pumps
Plant

Vision / 002

Cameras looking at leaves

Experiments with images, video, and machine learning to recognize signs of pests and plant disease. A useful meeting of biology and computation.

Cameras
Data
Models
Patience

Robot / 003

Machines that make an idea visible

Small robots and mechanisms turn an abstract program into motion, friction, noise, and immediate feedback. This is very good for education.

Arduino
Motors
Code
Questions

Teaching notes

The program is a text.

It should be read, discussed, revised, and understood—not assembled by following clicks until something flashes.

01
Understand what you made
A working result is the beginning of the explanation, not the end.
02
Foundations create freedom
Syntax, logic, and careful thinking support creative anarchy. Both belong in the room.
03
Make room for the unexpected
If a student’s idea becomes a robot, a game, a sensor, or a boat, the boat is allowed.

Off the syllabus

Books, robots, plants, and strange useful projects.

A personal site should leave some evidence of a person. Eugene reads, experiments, fixes things, watches plants through cameras, and remains a friend of robots—even when they are being difficult.

There may also be a boat. Its technical necessity is under review.

Direct contact

Say hello.

For School of Code, a collaboration, a question about an experiment, or a photograph of a particularly competent robot.

evgeny@vlasov.ca

Calgary, Alberta, Canada