That's a picture of myself (right) and my BFF Gabriela during a moment of girl talk (photo credit: Gabriela Magda). I just received a B.A. in Individualized Study, from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University (New York, NY)!
Gallatin is a small college in NYU where students get a degree in Individualized Study and construct their own interdisciplinary majors. My concentration was called Artificial Intelligence, and consisted of linguistics, philosophy, logic, computer science, anthropology, and mathematics. As a freshman I was interested in writing and art history. Upon realizing that everyone else in Gallatin wanted to be a writer too, I became interested in mathematics, then philosophy of math, then logic, and finally computer science.
My senior colloquium was in April 2008 and focused on the concepts of scientificity and rationality, examined through the writings of Descartes, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Latour, Kuhn, and others. My faculty were Dr. Bob Rehder, Dr. Ray Dougherty, and Brad Lewis, M.D., Ph.D.
My non-academic interests include contemporary urban music and art scenes, youth culture, and international politics. I have always lived in New York City. The DMP surprised me by placing me in Tampa for the summer. So far my favorite things about Tampa are the sunshine, the beach, and how clean everything is.
Dr. Robin Murphy
Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of South Florida (Tampa, FL)
Director, Institute for Safety Security Rescue Technology
Dr. Murphy researches safety and rescue robotics and human-robot interaction. She has received much acclaim for her work deploying robots in search-and-rescue missions. Here is her profile in Time magazine.
The DMP is a program that is run by the Computing Research Association (CRA-W) and places female computer science students with female mentors in their fields of interest, for a summer research project. I am participating in the DMP to help me decide if I want to go to grad school for computer science. It's my first time doing research and I'm learning a lot.
I am working on developing a technique for presenting imagery collected by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to emergency responders and structural engineers. The UAVs are deployed in disasters that are too dangerous for humans to enter, and return information about the disaster site. The goals of this project are as follows:
- To gain proficiency in Google Earth and other locative systems
- To design a display system for emergency responders and structural engineers
- To design an interface for the rescue team
To see the things I'm working on, check out my research page. For more about my experience here, read my blog. Here is my conference paper!