What an exciting day! This was the first time I got to meet the rest of the team that I'll be working with this summer. To clarify, I am being funded through the DREU, which gives students like me opportunities to work on research projects through bigger universities like UW. However, the project that my mentor is having me work on is also receiving help through the Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) program at the eScience lab on campus. Therefore, while I'm not being funded through DSSG, the rest of the other teammates working on the Paratransit Project will all be DSSG interns. There are also three other projects that are working through the DSSG program this summer, so the morning started off with each project lead introducing their project and then being introduced to which interns will be working with them. Anat introduced our project and paratransit, and afterwards we got to meet with the rest of our teammates. We ended up talking in a big group with the sidewalks project*, which was good but we didn't have as much opportunity then to relay all the specific details that are encompassed in our project. I'm sure we'll talk about it more tomorrow though.
In the afternoon they had a session on COMPASS social media training that Anat and I also attended. It aimed at explaining the importance of sharing your professional work and questions through social media sites, and it explained a little bit on how to get started and where. For me, it was informative in that I learned about different platforms where people are being social in a professional setting, but I am not sure I'm really going to use any of them just yet.
*The sidewalks project is one of the other three projects receiving help through the DSSG program. The project aims to make a map that shows which sidewalks, crosswalks, and other paths are accessible (based on ADA guidelines) for getting around in the city. Anat mentored Nick and the team that initially started the project this past year, so she has close ties to him and the project. Also their project is closely related to ours because they are also using a lot of mapping data and trying to implement routing algorithms.
In the afternoon they had a session on COMPASS social media training that Anat and I also attended. It aimed at explaining the importance of sharing your professional work and questions through social media sites, and it explained a little bit on how to get started and where. For me, it was informative in that I learned about different platforms where people are being social in a professional setting, but I am not sure I'm really going to use any of them just yet.
*The sidewalks project is one of the other three projects receiving help through the DSSG program. The project aims to make a map that shows which sidewalks, crosswalks, and other paths are accessible (based on ADA guidelines) for getting around in the city. Anat mentored Nick and the team that initially started the project this past year, so she has close ties to him and the project. Also their project is closely related to ours because they are also using a lot of mapping data and trying to implement routing algorithms.