One of the biggest driving factors into why I chose to participate in the Eureka program this past summer was because I wanted to do research about Parkinson’s disease. My grandfather was diagnosed with PD a few years ago and I wanted to help him in any way I could. My experience with Eureka taught me that there is hope through research to not only patients diagnosed with PD but also for many other previously incurable diseases.

I think participating in this workshop would forever change the way I think about science. Now, I understand that those moments are extremely rare; instead, most science (especially in biology and medicine) is gradually built up through the accumulation of meticulous research by many people. It is this building up of knowledge that is responsible for all that we know about the small but significant protein alpha-synuclein, as well as so many other structures in the human body. Although my research in this workshop would not shock the scientific community, I still feel very happy that I have contributed to the knowledge about alpha-synuclein which may one day be used to further the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.

In the first couple of meetings, I am getting used to the background information of Catiline. Around halfway through, the Professor asks for my preference on the topics of the paper and provides me with several possible options. He helps me to narrow down and incorporate some sub-topics to make my argument more solid. When we talk about Caesar’s Gallic War, I am able to reflect on what I have learnt in the past. The atmosphere for us talking is relaxed and it does not sound like a ‘class’ at all.

One of the biggest challenges is the ideas. I have not formally researched Artificial intelligence before, and I was introduced to many new concepts in this workshop. I overcame it with my own research and with the help of my professor and others.

One memorable story is that when I got my model down, which is a very small and easy model, I felt so excited. And on the next class, it WAS the initial mode of the famous Cobb-Douglas model, which really surprised me.

Was able to figure out which research topic I wanted to do based on the research papers assigned by professor. Professor helped with the whole process, getting accustomed to research papers, learning about general artificial intelligence, finding an interesting topic to write about, structuring paper, conducting experiment, and paper edits.

The process of communication is very important. The professor is friendly, insightful, and always willing to help. Trust shall be built between the student and the professor so that the professor can really help you improve. What is more important is to think independently and make the discussions with the professor more meaningful. It is a process where ideas are exchanged and improvements are made, not a process of waiting for the professor to decide everything for the student.

Choose a topic that you are passionate about or want to learn more about. If you are going to spend your holidays conducting research or writing about a topic, ensure that you are engaged and are enjoying the process; don’t condemn yourself to two months of mathematics if you hate numbers… However, have an open mind and be willing to learn about something new. Perhaps you will find something that will engage your interest.
In addition, DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK QUESTIONS. Professors are there to answer your questions and guide you. If you do not understand something, ask. If you need help during your writing, ask. Active communication will help you greatly throughout the researching, reading, and writing process

Inspired me and enlightened my passion to pursue an engineering degree with a primary focus on Mars colonization and application of existing technologies on Mars. The Professor was very encouraging and helped guide me through the process as well as trouble shoot when issues occurred. The process of research is more engaging and rewarding than anything else.

I gained research skills, more knowledge on Semantic Segmentation and a good experience of writing a paper. The Eureka experience gave me greater insight into how research is conducted in the scientific field and gave me greater clarity on my future career goals.

I was able to conduct my own behavioral economics research, which helped me learn a lot not only about the topic, but also how to read existing literature and how to conclude statistical data. Going forward, these skills will be important for me in college as I pursue more independent work.

I actually didn’t know what I should explore at the start, so my professor helped me to narrow the range down by selecting papers from various ranges for me to read. Through massive search through data and research I finally settled on researching “nudge”, the science of promoting decision making. Then professor guide me through some vital and fundamental papers in the field of behavioral economics and help me to build up an essential knowledge base for my research. Then we would meet once a week to discuss my progress and the problems that I met during the research. The Professor also instructed me how to select useful data from various charts and gave me important advice for the direction of my research.

I struggled with finding sources relevant to my topic, gendered architecture, because it was so niche; this deprivation, in turn, made it hard to come up with a cohesive topic to write about. In the end, I overcame this problem by finding much more well-explored fields to talk about and paralleling it with my paper at hand. This approach allowed me to develop a narrative much faster.

I think one interesting story was when we finished with that day’s lecture, we started talking about some really rare undeciphered language, and he told me a lot from a researcher’s perspective about those languages which provides me a different point of view other than watching YouTube videos to learn about them.

My favorite part studying in Eureka was learning about the different research methods like Framing and Priming. They were methods that I had not heard about before and they helped me to eliminate different factors to find causation. Implementing these methods into my questionnaires was also an intellectually stimulating process.

In our brainstorming, we laid out multiple ideas before settling on 3. These 3 were the ones we had a vague setup of how to do it. In the end, we decided to do spacing and massing. My professor had done something similar to it, so he was able to guide me through it. We finalized our experiment and use Prolific to send out paid forms. When we got back the results, my professor used a software to show me different way to interpret the information. He explained statics and how to interpret it. I began writing the essay and had multiple meetings with my professor about.