My long term
career goal is to become a scientific researcher or educator. I probably will
not work directly with infectious diseases but the lessons and skills I picked
up as a laboratory technician will tremendously help me in graduate school. My
field is neuroscience and it is a very interdisciplinary field where
philosophy, psychology, biology, chemistry, computer science, and many other
areas merge. Collaborating with a team of computer scientist will teach me how
to communicate with other experts who are not in my field. In the process, I am
also learning about game design and programming languages, which will be a
great asset to my future career as a scientist.
My weeks
contain many meetings with different people involved in the project and reading
primary articles. Besides meeting with my mentor weekly, we also have frequent
meetings with the computer science team to discuss what’s possible and feasible
in terms of the game. In order to produce an accurate game, we also plan on
meeting with HIV experts and educators from GMU. I also meet with my computer
science partner Ed to exchange ideas and work on the project together. I also
spend some time searching for open sources videos and images we can use to
incorporate into the game, while reviewing primary research articles to provide
the most up-to-date, accurate scientific information available on HIV.
The past couple
weeks were a little hard because we realized setbacks and hurdles in the
development of the project. What we want in our heads versus what is really
feasible for us to create within the given time seemed a little discouraging to
me and Ed but thankfully with the encouragements from our mentors, the project
is going strong!
