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AlonzoBenavides
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Introduction
If you have any questions or simply want to discuss any of the ventures below, please
let me know through email. If you simply want to read some of my works, click any of the following links:
Professional VenturesNASA - Ames Research Center
In my second year as a NASA MUST Scholar, I accepted a job working for the Ensemble Team at NASA Ames.
This group works to provide scientists with the necessary software
for scheduling and planning the daily activities of our Mars spacecraft. My assignment was to create a
search feature to assist mission planners in modifying large plans. This project required learning
and utilizing the XPATH language. Toward the end of the summer, my mentor gave me the
opportunity to fly to Phoenix Mission headquarters in Tucson, Arizona. Upon entering the planning room,
I immediately noticed that our software was being projected
onto numerous walls in almost every room. This trip showed me the importance of my job and encouraged me
to create even higher goals for myself. By the end of the internship, I had completed my features and my
code was uploaded to the main server for deployment on all subsequent releases. The fact that the MSL
mission will be using the software that I helped build is the greatest feeling I have had at any job.
For the technical summary of my accomplishments at Ames, please refer to my
public abstract and
poster presentation for the summer of 2008.
NASA - Jet Propulsion LaboratoryIn the summer of 2007, I was able to participate in a ten week internship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. I was placed in the Planetary Sciences department to assist a scientist studying Saturn. More specifically, I was given the job of analyzing the thermo-physical properties of Saturn's rings. This assignment mainly involved writing a program in Matlab to simulate Saturn ring particles. For a more detailed explanation of my experience at JPL, I would encourage you to read my public abstract and view my powerpoint presentation that I made at the end of my internship. This was a model internship; I had a great time and I learned a lot about working in a research environment.
Optimal Learning LabDuring my spring semester of 2007, I was given a programming position with the Optimal Learning Lab, an organization in the Human Computer Interactions department at Carnegie Mellon University. The purpose of the lab is to investigate and describe models of human learning in an effort to improve instructional software. My job was to analyze human and model data; I did this by writing graphing routines in java. After writing the general graphing classes, I was able to integrate the new graphing functionality into various modules that made up our analyses software. I greatly enjoyed working for the Optimal Learning Lab; however, I now find myself too busy with school to continue to commit 20 hours a week.
CodewareBefore my first semester in college, I was offered a summer job working for Codeware, a company that focuses on distributing and offering support for pressure vessel and heat exchanger software. My official position was the company technician. I had a wide range of tasks that included: updating the main database, purchasing and installing new software, and configuring an IP phone system to keep all our branches in optimal communication. I would say that this job taught me how to communicate effectively and appropriately with upper-managment. In addition, I had an amazing view of downtown Houston!
Paulin Research GroupMy first job, which lasted two years! When I was 15 years old, I was able to get a part-time job working for Paulin Research Group, a small company that writes their own pressure vessel and heat exchanger software. In my first year, I mainly stayed inside the office writing code in visual basic and helping with the GUI designs for our software. I was then promoted to laboratory assistant, where I was given much more responsibility. Many times I was given vague tasks that would involve me designing my own experiments and conducting them with little supervision. I learned how the scientific process works in a real laboratory setting. I think this was the perfect job for me at the time; Working at PRG increased my motivation to do research, computer science, and physics.
Personal VenturesUses for Centroidal Voronoi TessellationOne of the biggest problems that has not been solved is context based image sorting. What if there was a way to sort a database of images by context without any human input? Can a computer successfuly group images that are most similar? There has been some advancement in this area, but I might have a new idea. The answer is in Centroidal Voronoi Tessellation (CVT). Hopefully, I will be able to finish the algorithm I am working on that will autonomously sort any set of images into smaller sets that are syntactically valid. For a detailed explanation of my project, I invite you to read the proposal that I have been able to write with aid of a fellow student.
Interpreting GraphsWhy don't we examine a new way of function visualization... We know the definitions of saddle points, zeroes, and derivatives from calculus, but how would they look on a different kind of graph? In the following paper I propose a new approach to looking at functions graphically. We will examine how saddle points and zeros are seen in a new light. If you are intrigued, please take a few moments to take part in this leisure reading: Math Graphing.
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| © Alonzo Benavides 2009 | |