Internship Project and Summary of the Week

Project Description

Hello everyone back at school!
My internship site is at UCSD in the neuroscience department. The project that I am working on is the PING colorization project. UCSD recently launched a new study having to do with children and how their brains develop and how our genes effect behavior. As a part of the study, after the children participate, they receive a olored picture of their brain. Everyones brains look a little bit different, and since kids might want to compare pictures and one persons might look different and the researchers here dont wantc one of the kids to feel un comfortable because their brain may be different. Calvin and I are going to take the brain images and mask them so even though their brain may be different, no one would be able to tell the difference. We are going to create pictures from different angles, make the pictures more cartoonish and add color. We are going to learn about the brain and how a research study is conducted and how it runs. This will benefit the department because it is something that they want to do, but no one has time to work on it and we are going to get it done. Our schedule is pretty up in the air because at some point we are going to be experiencing the research in another lab on campus and I am even participating in the study. By the time internship is finished, we should have a system of coloring the images and we will have already processed some from the study. I am going to use my science skills to help out and teach me more about the brain. I also am going to use my photoshop skills and my technical problem solving skills to work on the project and learn how to use various brain imaging programs. I will be collaborating with Calvin and we are going to be collaborating with many different people on the new PING study. At exhibition I could show what the PING study is and what it is about and show the pictures that I processed and teach the people some things about the brain.

Summary of My Week

My main highlight was getting to learn about things you can see in an MRI about a childs brain and learning how to kind of use the brain imaging program. It was really cool to play around and look at different slices of brains that we could use in our project. My only challenge was that I was sick and so it didnt make internship very pleasant, but I still powered through. This is an academics office, so everyone here is always coming and going. I dont really have the opportunity to work with anyone else besides Calvin, everyone is pretty wrapped up in what theyre working on. I guess I really didnt expect to be working in an office where people arent always on a daily routine and always talking to each other. Everyone does their own thing and goes to meetings and classes and it all changes on a day to day basis.