UCSD COSMOS Cluster 12 - 2022

I can't believe I forgot to share out about COSMOlympics from Week 1!  Our first Friday of COSMOS, we had a big event that our whole cluster worked together all week on -- COSMOlympics!  We competed against other clusters in various events.  It was a great ice-breaker, cluster bonding event.  Below is a video on our skit, cookie eating contest, musical chairs and cup stacking games.  We came in THIRD PLACE!  Way to go Cluster 12! Aaron competing in musical chairs.  He came in fourth! Julia competing in cookie eating!  She had to eat a cookie off her face without any hands.  She came in first! Anshul competing in cup stacking!  Which is hard even when you have a table! The entire cluster performed in the skit and dance!

The last few days we've used a movie review dataset to create a machine learning model that determines if the review is positive or negative.  We got to see how some of the math we've learned in school (and sometimes math we haven't seen yet, but will soon) applies to things the people use everyday.  It was challenging but through the process we realized that we learned a lot. On Thursday, we presented our Sentiment Analysis of Movie Reviews project.  You can see our presentations below. Brina and Aaron Presentation Slides Abigail and Abhay Presentation Slides Aarushi and Julia Presentation Slides Sophie and Ben Presentation Slides Lynette and Jason Presentation Slides Kelley and Jasmine Presentation Slides Katherine and Taejun Presentation Slides Emily, Shuchi and Jaemin Presentation Slides Emilie and Alex Presentation Slides Cheryl and Anshul Presentation Slides

Students presented their neural network projects.  Students were tasked with training their model to identify images and create an application around it.  At the conclusion, the students voted for their "People's Choice Award" for their favorite application created.  The teaching team (faculty, cluster assistants and teacher fellow) selected the "Faculty Choice Award". Congratulations to our Faculty Choice Award winners: Brina and Shuchi.  We had a tie for the People's Choice Awards!  Congratulations to Kelley and Taejun and Emily and Abigail. You can view everyone's presentation, slide deck and demo (if available) below. Guess the Animal by Kelley and Taejun - People's Choice Award Winners Slides | Demo  Banana or Broom by     Brina and Shushi - Faculty Choice Award Winners Slides | Demo Delectable Desserts by Jasmine and Aaron Slides | Demo Dogs vs. Diamonds by Alex and Aarushi Slides | Demo Pictionary by Julia and Ben Slides | Demo Dog or ...

Cluster 12 has had a busy week!  We started off the week with some guest speakers from Engineers for Exploration (E4E).  They were all current students (from undergrad through PhD) who were working on various projects that dealt with conservation, ecology and/or environment.  Their research ranged from baboons in the wild to fish in the ocean.  It was fascinating to see how machine learning is used to help protect our environment and animal species.  We got a chance to talk with them afterwards to learn more about their own personal journey.  Not everyone's path was straight and direct and it was good to hear that you can come back from setbacks. On Tuesday, our Discovery Lecturer (an all-COSMOS presentation) was from a data scientist.  We could relate to much she had to say.  Then we got time to work on our ethics essays.  The ethics essay is part of a COSMOS essay contest where we'll find out the winners at the end of COSMOS.  The priz...

 On Monday, students presented their work using logistic regression.  This was their first "formal" presentation of the cluster. They analyzed census data to determine what census predictors say about social equity.  They had to find a way to predict who would make more than $50K per year and who will not.  Students determined what features were relevant and commented on any observations.  Below are their presentation.   Anshul and Emily Abigail and Jason Abhay and Shuchi Taejun and Jasmine Kelley and Jaemin Katherine and Alex Julia and Aaron Emilie and Sophie Cheryl, Aarushi and Brina Ben and Lynette Apologies for some unfocused videos.  The camera was having issues.  

Check out the article our students wrote for this week's newsletter! COSMOS Newsletter - Week 1: Cluster 12's article

Students have spent the first three days of COSMOS learning the programming language Python.  We have 5 student mentors (John, Henry, Jeannie, Sam and Wendy) to help them throughout the activities and labs.  Today (Wednesday) students began working on their first project - "Saving the Penguins" - in which they implement clustering.  I'm very proud of all them and how they've handled the crash course on Python!  They hung in there and have learned a lot in the first three days. Scavenger Hunt Ice breaker on Day 1 Scavenger Hunt Ice breaker on Day 1 View from our classroom Photos during class and lab:

Curt Schurgers  Curt Schurgers received his Ph.D. from UCLA in integrated circuits and systems, and his MS in EE from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (KUL). Before coming to UCSD in 2002, he was a postdoctural associate at MIT. He has also held a research position at the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC) in Belgium. From 2004 until 2010, he was an Assistant Professor in the UCSD ECE Department, leading the Wireless Information Systems Lab. In 2010, he became a Development Engineer at the UCSD Qualcomm Institute, supervising the Prototyping Lab. Since July 2017, he has been a Teaching Professor in the UCSD Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.  In addition to teaching introductory engineering and programming classes and developing new pedagogy for them, he is also a co-Director of the Engineers for Exploration program. In this program, undergraduate students build new tools for ecologists, archaeologists and explorers, and then assist them in ...