Minerals, Mentors, Musings Oh My!
This can be found on the official Stanford Earth Science interns blog and covers the first three weeks of the internship.
Salutations fellow netizens and welcome to my blog!
My name is Joanne Ma and I am a rising senior at Evergreen Valley High School and an intern at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences. Meet my mentor, the effervescent Frances Liu, who gave a short introduction about herself:
My name is Frances Liu and I’m an incoming PhD student in Professor George Hilley’s group. For the past year, I have been working as a research assistant with Professor Hilley, modeling flexure subsidence in foreland basins and building a user interface for our model. I have also been participating in the xibited.com project started by Professor Hilley. It is aimed at providing informative self-guided tours for Stanford visitors on smartphones and tablets.
My primary focus this summer involves the development of the web and mobile application that Frances mentioned, which will be used to guide visitors on an audio and visual tour through our world class minerals collection located on the second floor of Mitchell Earth Sciences. The goal of this app is provide visitors with a greater understanding of the minerals of the world by exploring the technical side of mineralogy, its practical uses, and its historical significance.
Writing code is just one of several components to creating a successful app. Scripts for every mineral must be developed prior to recording the audio scripts in the sound studio. Thus, hours of research are put into developing edifying yet engaging content for the public. In addition to the mineral audio scripts, accompanying visuals such as diagrams and interactive animations must be sourced prior to implementation into the app. All of the scripts and visuals must be finalized by July 10th, so we are working tirelessly towards that deadline so we can dive into the database problem and address other parts of the app making process. When the tour is completed, it will be available via xibited, which can be downloaded from the Apple App Store.
Here are some of the minerals from the mineral collection:
Besides the minerals tour app, I am in the process of conducting my own research project that involves the intersection of human health, earth sciences, and technology. Given the infinite number of topics that I can address, I am still working on going through as many papers as possible and narrowing down my choices so I can get started on my research. During this time, I will be learning R for statistical analysis and modelling and ArcGIS to produce geographical overlays that will tie into finding correlations and understanding the effects that geology has on certain regions in the world.
In the remaining weeks, not only do I hope to design and carry out a meaningful research project, but I also hope to experience more of the campus, faculty, and all that Stanford has to offer. The general sense of community and camaraderie makes interning at Stanford simply sublime.
