Many students will be remaining in the Texas A&M University lab to continue working on research, projects, and conference submissions. Others will be traveling far and wide to work.
For example, Siddhartha Karthik is interning at Yahoo Inc, in Sunnyvale, California for the summer. While he was excited about working in the beautiful Silicon Valley, Karthik was equally intrigued by the prospect of working with Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, whom he had heard a great deal of praise for.
(Siddartha Karthik and Marissa Mayer)
"I am part of the Network Security team," Karthik elaborated.
While working under David Filo, the team will be "pushing code that actually impacts 500 millions users on a daily basis."
When asked how his summer opportunity relates to his work, Karthik replied, "I have always been interested in Network Security. This internship will give me hands on experience on one of the largest networks in the industry."
All the while, Ranerio Lara-Garduno will be spending a large part of his summer at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston for his first research internship.
By combining information from GIS and GPS systems found in cellphones, Lara-Garduno will be researching technologies that can not only locate someone, but also be able to tell whether that person is inside or outside of a building – something that global position systems (GPS) cannot currently do.
Both Lara-Garduno’s research in SRL and his summer research will be dealing with the fusion of public health and computer science. While Lara-Garduno is enthusiastic about his summer opportunity, one of the things he is most excited to do is spend time in Boston. He attended the TAPIA conference in the same city, but was unable to explore due to the winter storms and isolated location of the conference.
“I like the idea of going to a new city and getting to know it for a bit,” he explained. “And, of course, the research connections I’m going to make there are going to be second to none.”
Lara-Garduno went on to explain that what drew him to this opportunity is how unique it was for him.
“I don’t think that it’s something you would normally see for research labs and summer research. It’s research in a much more applied sense – I’m not doing something in a computer science department,” Lara-Garduno explained. “My specific research is an applied research, which is different from a lot of computer science projects.”
Larry Powell, meanwhile, will be working a 12 week internship with Freescale. He will be working and researching post-silicon verification. While he was unable to speak about much of the content of his summer opportunity, he stated that he’s excited for the experience.
“The knowledge is definitely going to be useful,” Powell stated.
He is also planning to work on his main research during the summer as well and has made a deal with Freescale to be able to do his research when he is not working on his internship projects.
Across the country, Folami Alamudun is doing research work in Oak Ridge National Lab in Oak Ridge Tennessee.
(Folami Alamudun on a hike in the Smoky Mountains)
Alamudun’s research in SRL focuses on gaze interpretation and tracking in radiologists performing mammograms. He hopes to help cut down human error in misdiagnosis. His summer opportunity perfectly synchronizes with his interests.
“I will be analyzing radiologists' gaze data collected during mammographic screening,” Alamudun explained. “This summer, I am trying to extract additional features to build a predictive model for diagnostic error.”
While the prospect of hiking in the Smoky Mountains every weekend greatly excites him, Alamudun was equally attracted to the national lab for another reason as well:
“The idea of working in a national lab with so many brilliant scientists (and history) is thrilling,” he commented. “I get to walk past Titan [a massive supercomputer] every day. That never gets old.”
Similarly, Seth Polsley will be working at the University of Kansas in the Speech and Applied Neuroscience Lab, an area of study that is different from his main projects with SRL – Mechanix and Persketchitivity.
“I’ll be working on application for children with speech apraxia and other speech disorders,” Polsley explained his summer work. “Basically it’s an application where they can drag and drop words and things and they can move how long they are and where they are placed up and down. They can practice intonation and learn how tone works.”
After working at the SAN Lab, Polsley plans to work on his thesis either locally or in Kansas.
“I really, really want to start a nonprofit this summer with my sister,” Polsley commented when asked what he was most excited for this summer. “Because my thesis ties in with her stuff as well.”
He went on to explain that he would like the nonprofit, tentatively titled “Upright”, to be an educational or assisted living organization. Upright would provide technology and frames that provides rehabilitation assistance to people who are paralyzed from serious injuries.
“There is a big gap where if you don’t show notable improvement within a month and a half or so of [physical] rehab, they have to let you go and they tell you that you’ll never get better and you’ll never be able to do anything again,” Polsley explained.
The issue presented in medical rehabilitation that Polsley and his sister want to help with is that science has proven that is not until two years after the initial incident that caused nerve damage that the body begins to repair itself and rehabilitation works best, but after just a few months, the medical system discharges people who are not showing notable improvements.
“It works well with my thesis topic since I want to use gesture and natural sensing methods to aid in rehabilitation,” he added. “I want to do rehabilitation research and I really want to start a nonprofit. It shouldn’t be something like you get into an accident and it takes away your life. This is the 21st century. We should have the technology and be able to say ‘we can help you.’”
Where ever this summer has led members of the Sketch Recognition Lab, everyone is hard at work finishing projects, fixing programs, advancing technology, and planning lab outings to de-stress and enjoy one another's company.
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