Joanne's Blog
Salutations fellow netizen 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. I am working with Frances Liu, who has been working at Stanford as a research assistant since August and will be matriculating as a Ph.D student at Stanford this fall.
The Main Quad as seen from Hoover Tower.
My primary focus this summer involves the development of a web and mobile application 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.
The minerals collection, located on the second floor of Mitchell Earth Sciences.
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, animations, or interactive videos must be acquired 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.
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 am in the process of learning R, ArcGIS, and possibly MatLab in order 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.
The rest of Joanne's blog posts are published on this page: