Day 6

Day 6 – Intro to IT

Today was my first day in IT. I started off the morning by getting to meet Sarah Betz, a person who oversees a team of enterprise business analysts. She said that at first, she got a degree in journalism economics at UNC. So, she didn’t know that she would ever end up at SAS. So, at the end of the day, one of the main takeaways I learned was to just keep learning, working hard, and following my passion and I will end up in the right job for me. Then I sat in on a meeting with Ms. Bettz’ very friendly team and they talked about what IT does and what their goals are. They make SAS’s software compatible with businesses and they update and make changes and make bug fixes. This group also makes sure data is what they want from customers and that it’s clear. During lunch, I met with Andy, another IT worker and he explained how he got to SAS which was after he learned he likes to manage other people’s projects. After lunch, I met with Bill Mckeown who taught me more about IT and gave me an overview of his career. He explained how he used to work with data centers and how customers use SAS’s data centers.

After that, I met with Randy Wilcox who taught me about his job. Randy was a DBA (database administer). However, it is more like “Does ‘Bout Anything.” He managed and protected customers data, assisted RnD and helped with their optimization, and he helps sales through engineering of projects. He also showed me a little computer that had old arcade games on it that he plays on for fun from time to time.

Day 6: Roadway Design and Construction

Today, I worked with the Department of Roadway Design and Construction. They deal with anything involving roads, from widening them and extending the shoulders, to making sure that any underground utilities under the roads were in the correct location. They also deal with many of the environmental aspects of roadway design, such as runoff water and the impacts of road and street material. Today, I worked with a member of the department who was working on fixing traffic buildup in certain areas. He was using a program that analyzed different aspects of traffic, such as car speed, road size, and other things.

A model intersection on the program that I used.

Day 6 – Finishing Image Creator and Hip Circumference Calculator

Today, I finished designing the program to design and save images of patients’ CBC & BMP values. I decided to add several lines of code to my program that would decide that if cells had missing values, to add “N/A” to the image rather than a blank line of text. By doing so, I was able to stop the ‘hanging’ of the code and was able to allow for the code to run in full force. Afterwards, I began editing my code that would calculate patients’ WC values so that it would also calculate their HC values as well.

I do not feel comfortable posting any images as the data that we were working with is confidential and from REAL people; therefore, I am not able to disclose this information.

Day 6: The Performance Room

At this point, I have seen many of Response Physical Therapy’s patients and most of the patients I saw today, with the exception of an evaluation patient, were patients I have seen before. Today we had quite a few patients that needed to work in the performance room in the facility. Jeffrey took one patient, who had broken their tibia and fibula close to the ankle and dislocated their ankle, to the performance room so we would have more room for some of the exercises Jeffrey had planned. In the performance room, Jeffrey had the patient running, jump roping, skipping, and doing calf raises. Activities like jump roping and skipping were to help loosen the ankle and improve some flexibility while still taking on some weight. Calf raises were strengthening exercises which are necessary ass typically, after an injury, there tends to be some muscle atrophy and you want to regain all that muscle and more than that you want to build more muscle so that it can support the location of previous injury. Later in the day, Jeffrey took another patient into the performance room. The goal with this patient was to improve the strength of their hip flexors to reduce pain in the hips. Many of this patient’s exercises were strength and balance related. In the performance room there are stretchy cables attached to the floor and you can attach the other end to your waist. Jeffrey had the patient attach one end to his waist then had him walk forward until there was tension in the cable. He did many exercises with the cable were the patient would shuffle side to side or move up and back and the tension helped to work his hips. The final patient that day, a patient of Dan’s, also used the performance room. This patient was far out from an ACL surgery and was running. There were lots of hamstring, quad, and hip flexor targeting exercises for this patient to do: side-steps with a theraband, bridges while moving the feet in and out from under you, pistol squats, etc. The patient also used the sled in the performance room to push 90 lbs back and forth multiple times to continue building up strength.

Day 6 – Searching (part 2)

After collecting the middle school tablets and sorting them into the places they needed to go, a problem arose. The business office reported that there were a few tablets unaccounted for and as soon as i heard this i knew another search through boxes and computers was upon us. Luckily for us many of the missing computers were simply being kept by the students for a little longer and after finding most of them we narrowed it down to 3 pesky tablets. We searched through boxes and piles of computers but to no avail for the day. As we had other matters to attend to it was placed on the backburner but we will surely find the tablets the next day we search.

Today, Jonathan and I️ moved onto our third and final site. We met with Mr. Smith of Vanguard sports agency this morning around 9 am. Vanguard sports agency is a growing agency that represents players from basketball, football, and baseball. They handle their financial and legal deals of being a professional athlete. After this quick description, he explained to us about how to sports world is actually quite a complicated business and explained some stories of his experience. He also told us that he never knew what would happen to him on a day to day basis because everything was always changing, as things would in the sports world. Vanguard was created 4 years ago and had now grown to 3 different sports. He told us about his job, as well as his career that led to what he does now. He explained to us about the marketing side of being a sports agent, and how media deals with the players are extremely important for any sports agency. After a long and descriptive question and answer process, Mr. Smith gave us a project, something that would get our heads thinking about sports management as a whole. This is what Jonatan and I worked on the rest of the day today and will be working on tomorrow, leading to another meeting with Mr. Smith on Thursday. I️ will explain this “project” or “exercise” in tomorrow’s blog post since that is when we will primarily get i️t done. It was a fun day!

Since we didn’t go to an actual office today, this is a photo of Vanguards website.

Day 6: And We’re Scrolling!

On day 6, we focused a lot on our mini projects. One of those projects is a literature sorting assignment, in which we look at a long list of papers for researchers, and suggest which papers seem relevant to the research, and which papers don’t. The database of papers is huge, and as a result, the sorting process can take hours. Salma and I worked for probably 2-3 hours, just sorting through articles, and we still have probably hundreds to go.

We also got to meet with more researchers and people on the tech side of things. One of the employees we met is responsible for creating and managing drug databases for the company. The goal, is to inform consumers on the side-effects of taking two drugs at once, or the risks that certain drugs put them at. By increasing awareness, the databases alleviate concerns and stress.

Finally, we also got an introduction to some of the groundbreaking technologies that FHI 360 is experimenting with. Some include microchips that can remotely release drugs into the body every month. Others are subcutaneous and intradermal injections that manipulate the pharmacokinetics of the drug allowing it to last in the body longer.

Day 6

Today was a pretty relaxed day since both of the MDs weren’t in the lab today. I continued working with Sarah on our organoid project to observe their development in mice. What we got to do today was plate the organoids so that they’re ready to be injected into the mice. I also spent some of my time with Dr. Hsu in the clinic since he spends his Tuesdays and Fridays there. Unlike last Friday, he saw almost thirty patients yesterday, but I only stayed to come meet the ones that I met last week so that I could observe their progress. One of the patients with pancreatic cancer that I met last week came back in today and made the decision to start chemotherapy despite the possible risks because of his severe weight loss. With this patient specifically, it was interesting to note the behind the scenes work of the oncologist. Dr. Hsu was discussing with other oncologists what they would do in situations like that. Dr. Hsu explained to me that he rarely refuses treatment to his patients because he believes that cancer shouldn’t be viewed solely through an objective lens. When I was observing Dr. Hsu’s interactions with his patients I particularly noticed that unlike many other doctors I’ve shadowed, he takes a very holistic and engaging approach with his patients. Often times he’ll ask them questions to see how they’ll personally answer before he provides his own medical opinion. It was so interesting to see how flexible he was with his patients making it feel like they had the power in their own hands. As we were walking from the research building to the clinic building he explained to me that especially with cancer patients psychology plays a crucial role. He talked about how positively empowering the patient to be able to answer questions and make their own decisions (to some extent) is extremely important in cancer work.

Day 6 – Recording Day

The NC Symphony’s marketing department is always looking for new ways to reach out to potential new clients, so today I researched upcoming events in the Triangle Area that the company can go to and find people that have a yet-to-be-realized love for symphonies. Events like festivals and art expositions were my main researching points but it was interesting to see how much goes on in the area where everyone holds common interests. Whether it be music or art or superheroes or beer, there is always something that connects us.

I spent my morning taking a trip down to Meymandi Concert Hall to tour the facility as well as take a peek into today’s rehearsal for the Patron’s Appreciation Concert. The Symphony, every couple of years, invites all of their subscribers and season ticket holders, as well as donors, to a free concert held at the hall as a thank you for their support. I was able to sit in for a couple of scores and it was really amazing to experience the music in a proper setting.

Day Six – 6/5

Today, we started the day with some more lessons in statistics. Equally confusing, but much easier to get through today’s lesson than the past ones! Beginning to get comfortable with the million different variables used, and what they all mean. After hearing this, Dr. Laber took us over to the BOM again where we were introduced to a board game called “Boredoom”. Basically, a play on words of the computer game Doom to emphasize just how boring the game is, however it is also being done entirely for statistical purposes. Today, our job was to come up with different “levels” of the games and create different board configurations, solving each one, and annotating pieces of paper to denote each board setup we successfully made and completed. Working for 4-5 hours on just that today, we created a dozen different board configurations! He told us we are going to be working on this tomorrow as well with the goal of creating about two dozen different board configurations for the real final game, in which a board is being carved out of wood and pieces are being 3-d printed! Really cool! We met up with Lindsay in a coffee shop during our lunch break and she requested to make it on my blog :). Aside from this, we are getting the hang of doing these little tedious statistical tasks for the graduate students, workers, and Dr. Laber himself to help with the thousands of digital images and tons of board configurations which must be done before the actual statistical analysis and algorithms can be derived for each project they are doing.