STEM – Page 6 – CA Work Experience Program

Nearing Completion

Today, I finished what I started yesterday in separating the lignin value from the fungus and putting it in the background. Now, the fungus spreads evenly across the simulation as it chases the glucose produced from the enzymes breaking down the lignin, which fits reality much more closely in how it creeps across the wood in the background, much like real mold.

Because lignin is now tied to the background, it means more is readily available, so more of it gets broken down into glucose, which is then used by the fungus to stimulate growth, leading to a much higher amount, about 8 times as much. I expect this is how it is in reality as well, as the cells should have a fairly high density. With this crucial step, the final model nears completion. Tomorrow, before the last meeting, Emily and I will combine codes one last time.

Dr. Aziz told us today that what we have completed so far is similar to what he would expect a graduate student to do, and he said that we would be receiving high marks if we were his students.

Learning How to Make a Corporate Presentation

Today, we started off by going over some of the research we had done the day before. We then started talking about what story we wanted our presentation to tell and different ways to do that. We worked on finalizing our presentation with some corporate templates and during our second meeting of the day, we presented it. I’m really excited for tomorrow – we’re meeting for lunch to talk about this last week and a half and finally meet Greyson in person!

Day 7: Vector Textiles Environmental Modeling, Presentation Practice and Revision

Today was the final day before our presentation to Mr. Self. Our group decided to meet in-person for the first time today in order to practice our presentation in the format that we will give it in tomorrow. We did a couple practice runs and made edits/editions where we saw fit. We also discussed what we were going to wear tomorrow for the presentation, which might seem like a small detail, but looking presentable is extremely important in business. It helps sell the product, or the presentation in this case, which is a very valuable lesson I learned today. Tonight we plan to wrap up our final edits and practice our individual parts for the presentation, and I look forward to presenting tomorrow. The last two weeks of research have all been building up to it!

CSAP

My favorite thing I learned about today was the CSAP program. CSAP is a program at Cisco for new employees who have had less than 2 years of experience out in the workforce before coming to Cisco. The program pays them to learn and study the different architectures, so that when they go into their engineering or sales jobs that they are able to intelligently talk technically about the different architectures to their customers. They are 2 main parts the sales side and the engineering and sales side of the CSAP program. On the engineering side, they also complete a number of certificates during their time in the CSAP program.

From the many personal experiences shared by our speakers, we could only being to understand how the CSAP program has impacted the lives of all the participants. It builds and strengths the Cisco community.

-Grace

Dying Inside

Today was supposed to be mainly debugging and wrapping up, but my model hit a crucial wall because I wanted the fungus in the model to be sustainable and to make it grow endlessly, or at least like Dr. Aziz said where its food source, wood chips, wouldn’t have to be replaced for a considerable amount of time. However, the lignin in my model was running out incredibly quickly. I tried fixing it, but all this resulted in was an ever-expanding fungus population as the fungus didn’t die off before the lignin was replenished, and it was revitalized each time, shown here.

The aging fungus, however, didn’t produce the enzymes used to break down the pollutants, so even though there was a lot of it, most of it was useless. It also caused copious amount of computer lag due to the incredibly high numbers of simulated fungus later on. The problem was that the lignin amount was tied to the fungus, not the background like it was supposed to, but separating them will take much work. I’m attempting to do that now, but I don’t know if I’ll have enough time in the WEP to do so.

Virtual Reality and Market Research – Sarah

Today we were assigned new topics to research between our two meetings. Rohan and I researched VR – what the market looks like, where it’s going in the future, what’s holding it back from going mainstream, what are potential uses for it in the future. We had some good conversations about how it’s use cases and consumer demand that really creates a market for a technology and how because most consumers can’t justify the price and trouble of a VR headset, it’s not taking off. After that, Greyson showed us some research and market analytics tools that he uses when he has to put together presentations.

An Oculus Quest 2 VR headset

Career Discussions

Today we had a lot of discussions about careers, from career programs to early in career ideas. We were introduced to CSAP, or Cisco Sales Associate Program. This program allows college alums to get rigorous technical training on each of Cisco’s products while also building a network of field workers and virtual managers. This phase lasts for six months, after which participants are provided another 6 months to find a virtual position, which they will hold for a year. After that, they can move on to a field role. Networking is very important throughout both the process and wider careers because it allows you to leverage contacts to get to where you want to be. Another final takeaway I have is the wide variety of majors that come to CSAP and Cisco as a whole. There are people who majored in Communications, Electrical Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and even Chinese, who all ended up here. This goes to show that majors don’t define what you do in your career and that your passion is more important to follow.

-Price

Day 6: Vector Textiles Environmental Modeling, Presentation Work and Design

Today our group began the bulk of work on the presentation we will be giving to Mr. Self. We compiled all of the research that we had done the previous week and formed it into an engaging and descriptive power point. We divided the work amongst us evenly so that we could work more efficiently, and we coordinated what design techniques we would use for each slide as to not have repetition. I learned a lot about coordination in a team when putting together a project, and the role that collaboration plays in that. Tomorrow we will put the finishing touches onto the presentation and do a trial run to make sure we are fully prepared for the real presentation. I can’t wait to present and show off all the good work our team has done on finding a solution to this research question!

Playing with Numbers

This morning, Ethan and I met with Dr. Aziz and Leah to provide an update on our work from the past couple of days. These past couple of days, we’ve made some really great progress on the model, and things are starting to come together.

I spent the remainder of the day on three main things: debugging my code for lignin degradation, writing up tasks and the information page for the model, and designing the user interface.

Debugging the lignin code entailed a ton of trial and error with numbers. I went back and forth between my code and the interface multiple times, first to make sure the lignin was decreasing (since it’s being consumed) and not increasing, then to slow the fungal reproduction so that fungi didn’t dominate.

Since our model may eventually be used as a virtual experiment for middle and high schoolers or an educational game, I then worked on writing up the introduction page and some challenges that future players could try.

Lastly, after poking around on the web-based version of NetLogo, I realized that our user interface needed some re-designing since the graphs were really condensed in the web-based version, making them hard to read. Here’s the re-designed interface:

Talk about crazy colors haha! Let’s just say a lot is going on in the fungal filter and leave it at that…

Day 4!

My favorite meeting we attended on Thursday was about how your brand and network matter. We learned about how your brand is not only the activities/organizations you participate in but your general character and personality. We also learned about the importance of networking; it allows you to make connections and build relationships that can help you later on during your career.

Another session I found interesting was our session about Collaboration or more specifically Webex. I learned about the different ways one can use Webex to easily communicate with others. We were also able to see how someone who works at Cisco uses Webex on a daily basis. They are able to easily message other people who work at Cisco if their customer has a question about a given product and they don’t have the answer, for example. Based on my understanding, Webex appears to be a combination of Teams and Zoom in one platform.

Here is a picture of the Webex app format:

-Grace