Florida (Part III) - Bridge Day and Grace Hopper

I was going to have a "Florida Part IV" as well, but I really want to just go back to talking about non-florida stuff

Wendnesday was the "bridge" between the two conferences, aptly called "Bridge Day". A select few of us won scholarships to have guided tours at Epcot and Magic Kingdom, and that's what we did. Three huge groups of girls piled into buses and rotated between a tech talk, epcot, and magic kingdom. We started with the tech talk.

To summarize the tech talk, someone didn't tell Disney that there were a lot of graduate students present. If you want more details, I will tell you later, but it was like pulling teeth for the next hour and half. At least I got chocolate out of it.

Epcot was amazing. We got a backstage tech tour, and learned about the technology that Disney uses. There, we all got to go on the "Mission: Space" ride. At Magic Kingdom, we got a backstage tour as well (did you know that MK is on the second floor?). We also got to go on "Haunted Mansion" at Magic Kingdom. It was fun, especially because Disney has done some really neat stuff with lighting and holograms. All in all, I was pretty impressed, especially with how well they hide their cameras.

Grace Hopper was really cool. Imagine 1400 women in one hotel for three days. Now imagine them all in computing. Ridiculous, eh? Coming from a department with like 30 girls out of 600 students, it was quite something. Grace Hopper was quite, quite classy. I would have probably had a blast, if it wasn't for the fact that I had been interacting with people non-stop over the previous three days. While I can be quite the extrovert, even with that much interaction I need get away. By friday, I had to force myself out of bed, because I just didn't want to see people anymore.

Probably one of the highlights of the week was my lunch with my mentor, Tiffani. We went to lunch, and spent four hours talking about different things, especially things about life. I am so incredibly lucky to have a mentor like her, and she's seriously one of the most dynamic people I've ever met. Biggest take away from the conferences? Finding a sense of balance. Finding a sense of self.

Randy Pausch once said, "my next piece of advice is that you just have to decide if you're a Tigger or an Eeyore". All my life, I've been an Eeyore: incredibly cynical, and somewhat defeatist. At my best, I've been content with the world, but never saw it in a favorable light. But I have a gift; I can talk to people, I can interact with people, I can make things happen. I have enormous potential as a Tigger; whenever I join any organization or club, I somehow wind up near the top. It's happened since high school. I like organizing and leading, and I can. I've always repressed that part of me, since I'm good at it, and it scares me. Also, I'm a Computer Scientist; we're not supposed to know how to interact (some case of peer pressure, huh)! That will all be in the past. Now is the time for change.

Does this mean that I think everything is right with the world? Heck no! I just don't care anymore. I can still make good things happen, regardless of the bad stuff. If I embrace the side of me that is extroverted and aware of my strengths, I can really go places. As long as I have my "bounce" and my passion, I can overcome almost anything. So I'm going to give it a shot, and see where life takes me.

Before I left Orlando, I stopped by the Disney store. I picked up an Eeyore and a Tigger stuffed animal. I keep them on my bookshelf, so whenever I walk by, I can remember the promise I made to myself:
"Never stop, never give up. Inspire and be inspired. And above all - Embrace life"

Time to shift into overdrive. Things will be okay.

Florida! (part II)

I honestly thought I would have been blogging about the (two) conferences more than this, but I've honestly been too busy being exhausted and having a ton of fun. Just a quick recap of the weeks events:

The Richard Tapia conference started on Sunday. It was really good (if for no other reason) for all the people I met. Because it was a smaller crowd (about 400 people), you really got to know and sit down and talk to people. Plus, there were a lot of people from industry, quite a few who seemed to jump on the mention that I do my research in Computational Biology. This is a huge deal. Why, you ask? When I was originally going on job searches, back in Undergrad, at the big career fair, this is usually what went down: I'd find a pharmaceutical company that I thought would be a big name for what I want to do, and walk up to them. The conversation will inevitably go like this:

Me: "My name is Suzanne, I do Computational Biology!"
Rep: "Sorry, we're looking for Computer Science majors only"
Me: [face fallen] "But, I have a bachelors in Computer Science!"
Rep: [lights up] "Oh! Do you know Java? We need programmers in our IT department.."

It was so aggravating. Instead of recruiting people to do research, they all were just recruiting code monkeys, even the companies that were known for research in my field. Sure, it's really important to program, but that's not necessarily the focus of research. It was just so.... frustrating. How nice it was to finally go somewhere, not even looking for an internship, and being asked to sign up, asked for contact info, resumes, etc.

I also met a lot of people at Tapia. If for nothing else, that was so much fun. I played pool with two PhD students from Berkley and TAMU, hung out a bit with someone from Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and just had a plain good time with everyone. I also was really lucky to have one of the sweetest roomies that I could have been matched up with (Lacey, from Auburn U). Plus, there were two other students from RPI (Onur and Jiao) who came to Tapia. Together, we represented RPI CS at a booth for one day during the conference. That was also fun, because it brought back memories of my recruiting days as an Undergraduate.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention! At the conference I remet a PhD student who just graduated from RPI CS, Joel Branch. He is now working for IBM full-time as a researcher. That's just really exciting, so I talked to him about how life was for him at IBM, and some of the pitfalls and trials that a person may face as they are transitioning from PhD to the workplace. I also asked about how "kid-friendly" IBMs policies are, and was very happy to hear the answer. It was very informative, and made me seriously think about going to IBM afterwards and pursuing research. Who knows? Maybe I'll apply for an internship their soon.

Tapia concluded for me Tuesday night. There was an awards banquet that went a little too long, causing some of us to design plans to escape. I went back to downtown Disney for a little bit, before deciding I needed to go to bed. All in all a good time.

Stuff about Bridge day and Grace Hopper in the upcoming posts. I'm just too tired to blog about it now. Also, I probably should get moving, since checkout is in a little bit.
Till then!

-Suzanne

Florida! (part I)

Things learned so far:

1.) The food sold in the in-hotel mini-food-store is only ~$2 more expensive than the food sold at RPI.

2.) The beds at the Hilton are super soft and comfy.

3.) Downtown Disney is fun to walk around in.

4.) I look stupid with mouse ears.

5.) 4-inch heels are not good for walking, no matter how "comfortable" you think they are; 3 hours later, your feet will be in pain.

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Just got back from exploring Downtown Disney... there is a whole slew of shops, many of which I took pictures of. Of note was the Lego store, which I had a lot of fun walking through and taking pictures of. I also saw a "build-your-own lightsaber" station in one of the toy stores, which I just -had- to take a picture of (all my pics will be up on Facebook sometime later... during the trip, I'm not sure, but definitely after).

Conference related stuff is going to start around 6pm tonight. Until then, I'm going to relax, mostly, me thinks; maybe tuck into another research paper (I've read at least 5 so far). Or maybe I'll take a nap.. mmmm.. nap sounds good.

Getting Ready...

I'm currently in NJ, getting ready for the Richard Tapia and Grace Hopper conferences that I will be attending all of next week. I'm starting to get pretty psyched, especially about the Grace Hopper Conference, since it's largest consortium of female computer scientists in the country (~2000 last year alone). I'll probably be taking pictures and blogging about my experience while I'm there.
Who is Grace Hopper, you ask? One of the first modern computer scientists, wrote the first compiler, and developed COBOL (which, despite what current people may think about COBOL, was quite a feat). On top of all that, she was a Rear Admiral in the Navy. I found a clip on Youtube of when she appeared on the David Letterman show back in 1986, 5 years before her death:

Grace Hopper on Letterman Show, 1986.

She was also known for her visualizations of nanoseconds and picoseconds (shown in video).

Anyways, enjoy.. I'm going to get back to other stuff...

'Til then.

-Suzanne

23

So I'm 23 today.

I present to you Jakob's First Aquarium, in celebration:
Watch it now

I was hoping that youtube would post this to my blog, but apparently it's been several hours and it has not been posted.

New Species of (Itty Bitty!) Frog found in Kerala

The University of Delhi reports that India's smallest land vertebrae, named Nyctibatrachus minimus ("Small NightFrog"), has been found in the Western Ghats in Kerala. S.D. Biju, a Systems Biologist from Delhi University has been working in the Western Ghats to discover new species of frogs. His discoveries also include the Purple frog, and the first Canopy Frog from India (Philautus nerostagona).

Picture of the cute froggy appears below:



Links to articles:
Science Daily
IndianPad
Boing Boing

Alligator Lambda Calculus

Since my Turing Machine coloring book idea has not yet reached fruition, you can only imagine my pleasant surprise when one of my friends sent me this link about using Alligators to teach children about lambda calculus. It's really cute! I really like how the "eating rule" represents beta reduction.

Enjoy!