At
George Mason I study bioengineering and have a passion for designing assistive
technologies. I saw the application for this project posted on Handshake and
was eager to apply for the position. The goal of this project is to help
develop a technology for sign language recognition, where sign language users
would be able to interact with personal assistants, which currently only
respond to vocal commands.
Prior to joining the team, I was already familiar
with the inertial measurement unit data that the project would collect for the
software. Inertial measurement units are sensors which are present in a lot of
smart technologies today, which is why we use the Google Pixel to collect the data.
Most days I work with my team to process and sort the data into machine
learning classifiers. Before the start of this project, I did not have any
machine learning experience and was unaware of the behind-the-scenes algorithms
that are applied to raw data before analyzing and interpretation can occur.
From this project I have learned a lot about data processing and machine
learning, but also how to communicate effectively within a team setting to
accomplish research goals.
As
I continue my undergraduate degree and my professional career, I believe that
the team work and communication skills will be applicable in many future
endeavors, and the technical skills have given me a solid foundation for
further knowledge and learning
