Last Week at CIS

Sorry I have not been on my blog in awhile now! I have been so busy working on my presentation since I have been having technical difficulties with all of my videos not playing on certain computers. Anyways, I have learned so much this week about the background of biological motion and I have found out so many new and interesting things that I would love to research in the near future. I included brief little sections in my presentation about the extra little fun facts that I learned about while reading up on these walkers. I still don't think it has hit me that tomorrow is my last day here! So overall I have had an amazing time at RIT all summer! I want to thank Jeff and Susan for being great advisors and for always helping with our projects and giving great advice. I also want to thank Bob, Bethany, and Joe for putting together such an amazing experience for all of us. Some things I will miss the most is not seeing all of my new friends everyday and google chatting with Jarek and Henry all the time. I am so happy that I got to experience such an amazing program and meet such amazing people through the entire experience!

Day 30

Today I worked with Jeff and Susan a lot on my presentation and data analysis. My data showed the results that I was expecting but while I was talking to Jeff, I found another way you could take the data but that was only based on my observations since I only had 8 participants in my test I can't actually come to any conclusions. So they are having me write a research paper I guess you could call it and they may possibly look deeper into the topic later in the year. Then the rest of the day I continued to work on my presentation to get ready for Friday.

Day 29

Well look at all of the people from around the world that have looked at my blog!

Lets see, so today I finally started analyzing my data after it took Jeff and me awhile just to open my experiment but then I finally figured it out thankfully...I was getting really nervous at one point! So I used BeGaze to look over my data and my hypothesis came out true! There is a correlation with where you look on the biological figure and how you answer the question. While looking over the entire gaze replay, I also noticed that during the blank slides people that got the answer correct were making similar eye motions as they were throughout the video. Then, this afternoon I met Nick's friends and I think his one friend was messing with me by saying he was his adopted brother but I think he was joking at least that's what Mike said to me. Either way, I still believed him and they were all really nice and cool. Hopefully he reads my blog so he can see that he is famous now! Hi Nick's "brother"!!

Day 28

Today, I worked on collecting data for my presentation to make it more interesting. For the most part I just worked on the powerpoint the entire day. Then I had to leave early to get a little surgery on my hand. Tomorrow I need to start analyzing my data so I can add that to my presentation. Here is a picture from the other day that Bethany took!

Day 27

Today I continued to work on my powerpoint and taking pictures to make it more interesting. Then I went out to lunch with Bethany, Cassie, Maddie, Sadie, and Kaila. We had a really fun time hanging out and eating yummy food at Chipotle. In the afternoon I spent my time working on my challenge video and taking pictures and video clips for that.

Day 26

Today I got to work really early so that I could once again try to fix my experiment and what I found out is when there are more video clips in the experiment it doesn't allow me to load the experiment. So instead I only end up asking the participant 4 questions instead of the 7. I was able to test all of the interns and a couple of extra people today which added up to 8 participants in total which was the amount that Jeff wanted me to have. Then I went and helped Bethany work with a bunch of really young kids from a summer camp. We did some really cool stuff like taking a part a reusable camera.I also went to a quick meeting with the MVRL people and a couple of people from Sweden to discuss our projects and the textbook. I thought it was interesting to hear what type of research they are doing back at home. Overall it was a pretty crazy day!

Day 25

Today was a very busy day for me and I got a lot accomplished. As of Friday I couldn't test people because my experiment had an XML document error which wouldn't let me load the experiment. So this morning I worked with Jeff and Dong on the SMI trying to figure out why exactly the error is showing up. We came to the conclusion that the avi files may have only worked for macs so I had to convert all of the video clips to wmv files. While waiting for everything to load, I worked a lot on my powerpoint presentation for next Friday and started looking for extra data clips I can add to it. Hopefully everything will be going well when I start testing people on the SMI in the morning...fingers crossed!

Day 24

Today was a good day! I started working on my presentation a lot this morning! Tomorrow I can finally start testing the other interns on the SMI so i can start analyzing some data. During our lunch break a couple of the interns went and took funny pictures on the mac.

Day 23

Today, I worked in the intern challenge a little bit and then started working on my powerpoint presentation that I have to give in about two weeks. I have been waiting all week to start using the SMI so I can start eye tracking people for my presentation but it has been booked all week. Hopefully I can get everyone in by the beginning of next week. Then in the afternoon I helped the insight lab cut felt for their project.

Day 22

This morning I did a little more work on my experiment and continued reading chapter 4 out of the book before todays meeting. Mostly, it was just an exhausting day since we got home late last night and I still woke up early. Tomorrow, I plan on working on the intern challenge.

Day 21

Today I tested a few of the interns on the SMI which went pretty well. Then at night all of the interns went to Sticky Lips BBQ and had a great time there. We had the best table which included Christina, Jarek, Maddie, Cassie, and Nick. We then went to the Mees Observatory to look at stars and planets. We all had a great time together!!

Day 19 & 20

On Thursday and Friday we continued to work on the intern challenge by making a music video. I worked with Henry, Jarek, and David on making the video. We went all around campus taking some random clips of us dancing and singing. We ended up getting a lot of points for our video so Henry and I are still in first place. Here is our video enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRveZ8KgeNc&feature=plcp

Day 18

Today I worked on creating the design of my experiment that I will hopefully start testing everyone on soon. Then we went to the Wednesday movie in the fish bowl with all of the other interns. While doing all of these other activities, Henry and I worked on the intern challenge which we finally figured out by the end of the day! Tomorrow we are going to present our data for finding the platypus in a creative way! Overall good day!

Day 17

Today I worked on my project most of the day taking more video clips and starting to put them into an experiment. In our Tuesday meeting today I figured out that I was making my project to complex. After the meeting I took new video clips that were less complex than before. Hopefully tomorrow I will be ready to start putting the experiment together and start testing soon!

First Day Back!

Today was my first day back after a week vacation in the Adirondack Mountains. This morning we had a meeting with Jeff and Susan to discuss our projects that we will present at the end of August. After that we watched an hour of the Princess Bride with all of the other people in the MVRL lab. Once our break was over I learned how to take video shots of the computer screen so that I could take videos of the biological motion walker. Tomorrow I will start making my actual experiment with all of the videos I made.

Week of 7/23

This week I am on vacation in the Adirondacks! See you next week!

Day #10

Today was bring your friend to work day! I brought my friend Evan. We went to a presentation with Joe and some of his students from the freshman imaging science class. They took 3D images of the head. After the presentation we worked with the SMI and we did eye tracking on both of our friends. Then we went to the cookout and played some kan jam for a little bit. Then once again went to work on the SMI.

Day #9

Today we talked to Jeff about our projects that we are coming up with. One of his suggestions for me was to look into biological motion and give people a task and determine where they are looking on the animation to determine the answer to the task. I would use the SMI to watch their eye movements to determine the location on the body they determined such tasks as the gender, the weight, the emotions they are feeling and if it excited or nervous. You can figure out all the tasks by just looking at a nine point motion of a person. I am looking forward to begin my research on this project and to start the experiment to determine what exactly people look at.

Day #8

So today, we learned how to use BeGaze to analyze the data from the SMI. Preethi taught us what the most important data is in and how to find it in the program. Then we went to the Wednesday movie in the fish bowl which wasn't the most interesting movie so far. After the fish bowl most of the interns went to Global Village to hang out for a little bit. To end the day we (Mike and Nick) worked on the SMI to see if it would crash again.

Day #7

We went to the Research and Creativity Symposium all day and listened to the graduate research projects. I really enjoyed most of them especially Scott Riddle's project on Diffusion Tensor Tractography. DTI helps doctors who are performing surgery on the head to help make sure that the doctor doesn't disrupt the neurons that would disrupt the sense of motion etc. He made his presentation very interesting by engaging the audience and allowing for questions as the presentation went on to keep the discussion understandable. After hearing his presentation I would like to learn more about MRI and DTI data.

Day #6

Today I sat in a meeting most of the day listening to people's presentations that they will be delivering tomorrow. After giving their presentation the rest of the people in the room commented on each slide to help make the presentations perfect. I learned new skills about what people like to see in presentations such as Jeff hates ALL animations in power point especially the typer writer animation that actually makes the sound of an actual typer writer. It was a really interesting learning about the three presentations and I look forward to seeing them tomorrow!

Day #5

Group bonding in the reading room!

Well we made it through the first week of being interns! Today we sat with the SMI all day and we did multiple tests to figure out why the program would crash down so often. At this point we think it has to do with the program not being able to do so many tests in a row because after we restarted the computer  and did two tests on it the program would crash no matter which group files we used. At first we believed it was only group file three that was crashing down but was soon realized that all three of the group files would crash down at some point. Another great day in the lab! I am excited for next week to work with some new people on a different project!

Day #4

We made it through another day of boot camp! Today was the most interesting day because we learned about the different eye trackers and learned about the projects that went on at RIT. What I found most interesting was what Andy discussed today which was what part of a picture caught a viewers attention the most compared to what part of the actual picture would give you the most information about the picture. I also enjoyed learning about how a viewer looks at a picture differently when there are not faces in the picture. Later in the day we worked with Susan and were in her experiment but halfway through the SMI broke down so I couldn't finish my turn. Overall, today was a great day!!

Day #3

Survived another day of boot camp!! Only one more day to go! Luckily in the afternoon we got to work with another piece of equipment in one of the labs. After hearing about the Atlanta project today that some of the students are working on I am very excited to learn more about it because I have a large interest in it. Well I have lots of reading to do about the eye for tomorrow to get ready for another lecture.

Day #2

Day 2: Complete!
Today was much harder than yesterday and was the first day of boot camp. Boot camp was an interesting class to sit in on with all of the other students. At most times the information was really difficult to comprehend but all four of the interns made it through. After the class we started eye tracking which was extremely interesting! We had to wear a backpack with a laptop in it and a piece of headgear that had two cameras on it that took a video of the eye and one of the scene around you.
I am ready to get to day 2 of boot camp now!

Day #1

Day One: Complete!
The day started off great with a team building activity with the RIT scavenger hunt. The group I was in  had a great time fooling around with the camera and exploring the HUGE campus! We figured out that with all of the help we received from various employees that we could easily find a bunch of the pictures on the sheet. Well...that wasn't the case whatsoever. Two hours had passes and we had found all of four places in the packet. By the end we found about half of the pictures! After watching all of the videos, I found out that I would not be working in the MRI lab anymore but instead I will be doing biomedical imaging which I am very excited to start learning more about since I am very interested in the medical field! I can't wait to see how day two goes and to start working in the lab!