It's only been a week and I'm already loving my job!

In the first couple of days, I got introduced to the entire team, had a tour of the lab and got settled down in my own lovely cubicle. Janice and others also gave me a more detailed description of the project that I will be working on. It sounds very interesting and I'm really excited to get started on it.

I also had lunch with Wendy (Research Associate / Lecturer, School of Computing, Queen's University) and discussed about the Computing Unplugged program for girls from age 10-12 that I will be involved in. The goal of the program is to stimulate young girls' interest in technology through design, build and program Lego Robots.

In the meantime, I'm also enjoying the beautiful weather with my friends and taking pictures around Queen's campus for this website! Stay tuned for more of my summer adventures here in Kingston :)

It’s been another week of fun!

I started off the week by meeting with LIMB (Laboratory of Integrative Motor Behavior) group in “The War Room” of Botterell Hall to discuss the potential projects that I can get involved in. I learned about the current conditions of databases which are used in the project and got a list of contacts of the people who are involved in the research. By meeting with Janice’s group again on Thursday and doing a bit of reading on my own, I think I will first get familiar with the database by doing the User Interface Project. This basically allows doctors to record patient and KINARM data directly to DB2 databases in a user-friendly environment. Once this is done, I can move on to data analysis or software development.

The Lego Mindstorms NXT kits also arrived this week! I took an afternoon to assemble and program the robots. It was a lot of fun to see them running around in the lab.

Aside from work, I also got to see the Music Monday Concert put together by Kingston high school students in Grant Hall. As a violinist myself, it brought back many wonderful memories of my high school orchestra. Finally, my friends and I decided to wrap up the week by watching the final installment of Spiderman. I totally enjoyed it :)

I finally got to see and run some tests on the ever so talked about KINARM this week!

During the beginning of the week, I had my regular meetings with Janice and the LIMB group. We discussed our current state of research and the problems we encountered. One of our major goals/concerns is to make sure that our software is user-friendly enough to clinicians/researchers with minimal computing background. I also installed Visual 3D (advanced 3D analysis software available for biomechanical motion analysis using kinematics and inverse dynamics) on my computer. I will be working on this software in the near future.

Being able to run tests on the KINARM as a control subject for this project is the highlight of the week. I had my appointment at St. Mary’s of the Lake Hospital. Kim (lab technologist) and Mary Jo (physiotherapist) did the complete stroke assessment for me using both the robot and the traditional clinical method. From this hands-on approach, I learned the potential problems with the accuracy of the clinical method as well as areas of improvement for the robotic method. Now I have a better understanding of how things work in a real clinical environment. Overall, I find the entire test process very interesting and useful for my research.

At home, I’m packing up my suitcase for the long Victoria weekend in Toronto :)

Summer is finally here :)

This week, I had a tutorial on Visual 3D and the DB2 database from Ian (Manager of Biomedical Product Development)and Helen (software developer). Mary(NSERC/CDMP student) and I are going to continue to work on the user interface project while starting to work with Visual 3D at the same time. The database structure is also going to be modified to accommodate our needs.

Lots of things are happening outside of work. I went to learn salsa and played frisbee with my friends. My MCAT course also got started. A busy but rewarding summer is ahead!