Click, click, and SWITCH RET!

First Thoughts 

It has been an eventful week as an SWITCH RET intern. Although, I did the same program last year, this summer has brought about new challenges due to Covid-19. This year, we are trying to do the program virtually and I’m noticing plenty of positive differences.

SWITCH RET goals have stayed aligned with last year, we would like to disseminate research that we learn and conduct in STEM fields to be brought to our classrooms. An essential part of SWITCH RET is that it provides teachers with research experience, while improving our understand of computer science, engineering and health technologies. I picked ‘Click, click and SWITCH RET!’ for my title because I spent a lot of time clicking in zoom meetings this week- due to the virtual nature of our program, while SWITCH RET is the name of our wonderful program.

Fresh Faces & New Ideas

New Team- From Top left to Bottom right: Christopher Franklin, Allen Antoine, Daniel Angel, Azka Bukhari, Dr. Ashu (guest speaker), Carolyn Nichols (R-STEM Lead), Leon Rodriguez, Matthew Medrano & Claudia Peinado.)

I’ve been getting acquainted with the new team. This year we have, Daniel Angel, Christopher Franklin, Matt Medrano, Claudia Peinado & Leon Rodriguez. We will be focusing on Machine Learning computer vision, gaze detection  this year and our mentor is Mary Jin.

Links from fellow team members:

https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/ 

Video from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Facial Recognition

 Machine Learning

Dr. Ashu spoke to us about the various uses of Machine Learning, specifically computer vision- in the field of health care, self-driving car, etc.

M3 Model and CGM: Continuous Monitoring Glucose

Screenshot of the M3 model with current research.

Another student, Dr. Souptik exposed us to current research in the field of healthcare using the 3 Ms- Measure, Model & Modify. We learned about how CGMs can be used to monitor peaks and troughs in human beings- their goal is to create wearable technologies that are affordable and allow us to monitor our blood glucose levels at all times.  Dr. Souptik uses signal processing algorithm, and machine learning models to find patterns to create predictions. One of their long-term goal is to use data acquired to actually modify our eating and exercising habits through behavioral science.

Scope & Vision of PATHS-UP & NSF

Gerard Cote, director of PATHS-UP, showed us the grand challenge of Engineering Research Center to provide better and affordable health technologies to under-served communities. Unfortunately, these are the communities that are suffering due to various serious health conditions. He highlighted a plan to create “lab on the wrist” and “lab in your palm” to provide easier access to healthcare in this communities.  Our discussion took us to future of healthcare, personalized medical plans and basically tiny labs on our wrists.

Daunting statistics of illnesses in under-served communities.

Specifics of diabetes & CVD (Cardiovascular Disease)

Research Papers and OpenCV

In between all our talks, lectures and research papers, we met every morning from 9:30-11:00 to discuss the various readings with each other. I learned a lot from our discussions;  various thoughts, ideas and applications of computer vision were outlined. As a whole, we were wondering about the application of CV in our classroom settings and its ethical dilemmas. We realized how machine learning was already being incorporated into our lives, what the future holds for our current student population and how to prepare our students to create a better world in the future.

I started my programming yesterday after we got our weekly assignment from our mentor, Mary. I installed Pycharm, Sublime 3 & various packages needed. I was able to get my webcam live stream on my screen. I’ll be working on facial/object detection later in the day. I’m very excited already!

PS: I apologize for the grainy pictures. Unfortunately, I’m not Chris Franklin- our expert photographer.

Research papers & notes from video tutorials on Python & Computer Vision.