October 26, 2010 –
From left: Nguyen, Sanchez, Shin
Nine UCI undergraduate students recount their SURF-IT summer research experiences.
Ana Maria Sanchez:
I am especially interested in what role online game worlds play in children’s lives and the benefits there may be for spending a lot of time there. I like to joke that I had the best research project of all because I got $3,000 to play and write about Club Penguin for 10 weeks. And you would be surprised with what children are capable of doing and coming up with in virtual worlds! By exposing myself to this research, I am considering teaching on the college level in the future.
Jonathan Chu:
My project involved devices that could be put into people’s homes and make a practical difference in their lifestyles. My job was to modify the wireless communications firmware of the devices. I made an RF channel scanner to locate interference-free channels to send signals on. The most challenging part was the thousands of pages of technical manuals that I had to go through. It was gruesome, but now I know far more about embedded systems than any class could have taught me.
David Shin:
I was quite interested about the mounting effects of energy consumption, and the project had much potential to improve energy savings and efficiency. I spent many hours gathering data to help develop a thoughtfully devised survey. In the process, I learned that research is 80 percent thinking and 20 percent doing. Research convinced me that ideas not only need diligence but also creativity. I had to look beyond textbook knowledge and into the depths of thinking like a researcher.
Steven Nguyen:
My project was the union of two fields that I have always been interested in: the human side of computerization and the medical world. Before being in a research project, I had never really considered the amount of time it takes to plan out a study. But once everything was set, it was smooth sailing. The field work portion of the project is my favorite; there is nothing like going into the emergency room for observation and data collection. My interest in medical informatics has definitely increased.
From left: DeBrosse, Chan, Chu
From left: Huang, Lu, Yih
Jason Lu:
I worked on an interactive online game for children called KarunaTree, which emphasizes the understanding of global environmental sustainability. With a team of three others, I primarily worked with Web markup languages I was fairly new to. Once I was stumped on a coding problem, and when I finally got it to work, I inadvertently did a fist pump into the air. My mentor saw it and asked: “So did it work?” I smiled and said I was trying to hide my excitement. We had a good laugh.
Marvin Chan:
My role was to prepare ceramic samples for testing and imaging, in addition to learning FEM analysis software. I discovered very quickly that research requires patience, ingenuity and resilience. While some of the tasks were extremely meticulous and mundane, others involved pushing me to learn new things. Overall, I enjoyed experiencing the process of making new discoveries and I would definitely recommend this program – it’s a great way to fully immerse oneself in research.
Johnway Yih:
Malaria remains a very large issue and creating a system to diagnose the disease in a cheap and effective manner was very important to me. I gained hands-on experience in building and refining a low-cost blood analyzer device. I was able to focus my device precisely enough so that it would be sensitive to a single hair. Working in a lab and team environment, I discovered that doing research is very open-ended and requires personal drive to make achievements.
Howard Huang:
The project involved programming, which I am very comfortable with, and wireless communications, which is my primary interest in electrical engineering. I discovered that attempting to understand and manipulate a piece of software still under early development with little documentation was very challenging, as was trying to learn concepts usually taught to graduate students. I plan to enroll in independent study with my faculty mentor to continue the work I started this summer.
Spencer DeBrosse:
I studied how fansubbing groups – virtual teams who translate and add subtitles to foreign media and distribute it – work together by interviewing group participants all over the world. Coordinating the interviews proved problematic and many were completed at odd hours of the night. Besides a deeper appreciation for the field of human-computer interaction, my experience has significantly reduced my anxiety about approaching professors to get involved with research that is initially unfamiliar.
