2021-2022 NCSA Fiddler Fellowship Awardees
Undergraduate Fellowship Award
- Haihley Connors
- Home Department: Interdisciplinary Health Sciences
- Project: Breast Cancer Disparities
- Mentor: Zeynep Madak-Erdogan
- Note: Finished 2021 Summer REU INCLUSION with a distinction, NCSA Director‘s letter of recognition
- Jiho Alexa Park
- Home Department: Mechanical Engineering
- Project: Breastfeeding Application
- Mentors: Design for America
- Note: iho is a recipient of the 2020 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship award for her work on the Menstrual Inequity in the United States,/a>
- Ella Dennis
- Home Department: Psychology and English
- Project: Breastfeeding Application
- Mentors: Design for America
- Note: Ella is also a winner of the 2021 Social Hack Fiddler essay
- Jay Reiter
- Home Department: Math and Computer Science
- Project: Breastfeeding Application
- Mentors: Design for America
- Saaniya Kapur
- Home Department: Computer Engineering
- Project: Breastfeeding Application
- Mentors: Design for America
- Elena Escobar
- Home Department: Technical Systems Management
- Project: Map the System
- Mentors: Design for America
- Rohini Sharma
- Home Department: Computer Science
- Project: Racism Untaught
- Mentors: Design for America
- Quentin Herzig
- Home Department: Crop Sciences: Plant Biotechnology and Molecular Biology and Minor: Computer Science
- Project: Visual Analytics Group 3D biological network visualization
- Mentors: Dr. Donna Cox, Ms. Kalina Borkiewicz, Dr. Charles Blatti
- Note: Finished 2021 Summer SPIN with a distinction, NCSA Director ‘s letter of recognition
- Zhili Luo
- Home Department: Electrical & Computer Engineering
- Project: Virtual reality and ray tracing for materials science data visualization
- Mentor: Prof. Andre Schleife
- Note: Finished 2021 Summer SPIN with a distinction, NCSA Director ‘s letter of recognition
- Parth Tyagi
- Home Department: Computer Science
- Project: On-the fly data generation for neural network based gravitational wave detection
- Mentors: Dr. Eliu Huerta and Dr. Roland Haas
- Note: Finished 2021 Summer SPIN with a distinction, NCSA Director ‘s letter of recognition
- Nikil Ravi
- Home Department: Mathematics and Computer Science
- Project: Convergence of physics-inspired AI and extreme scale computing for multi-messenger astrophysics
- Mentors: Dr. Eliu Huerta
- Note: Finished 2021 Summer SPIN with a distinction, NCSA Director ‘s letter of recognition
- Yihong Jian
- Home Department: Computer Science
- Project: Using satellite data for large-scale crop monitoring
- Mentors: Dr. Kaiyu Guan
- Note: Finished 2021 Summer SPIN with a distinction, NCSA Director ‘s letter of recognition
- Yufeng Liu
- Home Department: Physics
- Project: Meeting the LSST Data Challenge: Galaxy detection and segmentation with deep learning
- Mentors: Prof. Xin Liu
- Note: Finished 2021 Summer SPIN with a distinction, NCSA Director ‘s letter of recognition
- Miah (Alistair) Nunn
- Home Department: Information Science
- Project: Natural language processing
- Mentors: Dr. Jill Naiman
- Haolin Luo
- Home Department: Biology
- Project: Modeling of the complex environment of the cell
- Mentors: Dr. Taras Pogorelov
- Note: Haolin received Jackson Summer Fellowship from the Department of Biochemistry, UIUC.
- Note: Finished 2021 Summer SPIN with a distinction, NCSA Director ‘s letter of recognition
- Note: He teaches chemistry to elementary school students
- Note: As a member of his choir he is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall
- Andrew Sunwoo Lee
- Home Department: Chemistry
- Project: Multiscale modeling of the cell membrane-associated phenomena
- Mentors: Dr. Taras Pogorelov
Graduate Fellowship Award
- Colter Wehmeier
- Jorge Rojas-Alvarez
Faculty Fellowship Award
- Dr. Jill Naiman
Press release about the 2021 awards.
Undergraduate Fellowship Award
- Wen Kun Yuan
- Project: Shift: Wheelchair Redesign
- Mentors: Design For America, Prof. Jacob Sosnoff, Dr. Deana McDonagh, Dr. Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler
- Note: Award-winning project 2020 Health Make–a–Thon hosted by Carle College of Medicine
- Anna Chi
- Project: Shift: Wheelchair Redesign
- Mentors: Design For America, Coach Adam Bleakney, Dr. Deana McDonagh,Dr. Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksle
- Note: Award-winning project 2020 Health Make–a–Thon hosted by Carle College of Medicine
- Jiho Alexa Park
- Project: Menstrual Inequity in the United States
- Mentors: Design For America, Ms. Valeri Werpetinski
- Note: Award-winning project 2nd place in the 2020 Map the System global systems-thinking competition hosted by the University of Oxford.
- Angela Chan
- Project: Menstrual Inequity in the United States
- Mentors: Design For America, Ms. Valeri Werpetinski
- Note: Award-winning project 2nd place in the 2020 Map the System global systems-thinking competition hosted by the University of Oxford.
- Ajaita Saini
- Project: Menstrual Inequity in the United States
- Mentors: Design For America, Ms. Valeri Werpetinski
- Note: Award-winning project 2nd place in the 2020 Map the System global systems-thinking competition hosted by the University of Oxford.
- Ke Deng
- Project: 3D Biological Network Visualization
- Mentors: Dr. Donna Cox, Ms. Colleen Bushell, Ms. Kalina Borkiewicz, Dr. Charles Blatti
- Kajetan Haas
- Project: Riveel3D
- Mentors: Dr. Donna Cox, Mr. Andrew J. Christensen, Mr. Colter Wehmeier
- Saumya Agrawal
- Project: Health Disparities: Determination of Biomarkers to be Used in the Diagnosis of Cardiac Microvascular Disease in Postmenopausal Women
- Mentors: Dr. Zeynep Madak-Erdogan
- Sarah Kishta
- Project: Gun violence sensor research project
- Mentors: Dr. Ruby Mendenhall, Mr Kiel Gilleade
- Brian Chen
- Project: AI system for identification of wildlife species in conservation videos
- Mentors: Dr. Aiman Soliman, Dr. Brian Allan
- Prannav Gupta
- Project: Human Fall Detection (Raspberry PI implementation of the fall detection system)
- Mentors: Dr. Volodymyr Kindratenko
- Aneesh Lodhavia
- Project: Human Fall Detection (Raspberry PI implementation of the fall detection system)
- Mentors: Dr. Volodymyr Kindratenko
- Mary Cook
- Project: Riding the Epidemic Wave, Nowcasting and Forecasting of Covid-19 in Illinois and Beyond with Various Intervention Protocols
- Mentors: Dr. Ahmed Elbanna
- Sneh Pandya
- Project: Weighing Black Holes with Deep Learning
- Mentors: Dr. Xin Liu
Graduate Fellowship Award
- Colter Wehmeier
Faculty Fellowship Award
- Dr. William Patterson
Press release about the awards.
Press release about the awards.
Undergraduate Fellowship Award
- Jasmine Shih
- Degree: Graduated SP 2019 CS and Art
- Project: Developed new visualization projects for the Advanced Visualization Lab
- Mentors: Dr. Donna Cox
- Post Graduation: Was awarded Winner of the ACM SIGGRAPH Poster Papers July-August 2019
- Jewel Ifeguni
- Degree: Graduated Summer 2019 CS and LAS
- Project: Was juried and outstanding entrepreneur awardee through NCSA Fiddler Innovation Award and TEC Award
- Post Graduation: Founder and CEO of YouMatter Studios
- Sarah Habib
- Project: Modeling and Detection of Black Hole Collisions with the Blue Waters Supercomputer
- Mentors: Dr. Eliu Huerta, Dr. Rolland Haas, Dr. Gabrielle Allen
- Brianna Creviston
- Project: Senior Fraud
- Mentors: Design For America
- Ajaita Saini
- Project: Senior Fraud
- Mentors: Design For America
- Tiffany Duong
- Project: Food Insecurity National Project
- Mentors: Design For America
- Kajetan Haas
- Project: Visualization innovation projects- Realtime Immersive Virtual Environments for Education and Learning (RIVEEL)
- Mentors: Dr. Donna Cox, Colter Wehmeier
- Yankun Zhao
- Project: 3D biological network visualization
- Mentors: Dr. Donna Cox, Kalina Borkiewicz, Colleen Bushell, and Dr. Charles Blatti
- Post Graduation: Yale Computer Science, Data Analytics
- Arjun Gupta
- Project: Deep learning and neuroscience
- Mentors: Dr. Eliu Huerta
- Xiaolan (Lily) Ke
- Project: Deep learning at scale for multi-messenger astrophysics in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope era
- Mentors: Dr. Eliu Huerta
- Jeffry (Yu Che) Wang
- Mentors: Dr. Aiman Soliman
- Swan Htun
- Project: GPU Computing for Bionanotechnology
- Mentors: Dr. Aleksei Aksimintiev and Dr. Chris Mafeeo
- Debopam Sanyal
- Project: Deep neural network model selection with application-specific metrics
- Mentors: Dr. Nigel Boshc
- Teja Gupta
- Project: Impact of housing discrimination on the pollution exposure gap in the United States
- Mentors: Dr. Ignacio Sarmiento Barbieri and Dr. Peter Christensen
- Sibo Wang
- Degree: B.S. Computer Science + Astronomy; M.S. Environmental Science (2019)
- Project: SPIN co-mentor, Satellite imagery in crop modeling
- Mentors: Dr. Kaiyu Guan and Dr. Rolland Haas
- Post Graduation: Chief Research and Development Officer at Aspiring Universe
- Lucas O’Bryan
- Degree: Graduated in SP 2019
- Project: Supported 6 interdisciplinary teams in creating innovative solutions to local social challenges within the C-U community and helped the teams to manage complicated problem areas into manageable projects
- Mentors: Design For America
- Post Graduation: Design Strategist at Siebel Center for Design
Graduate Fellowship Award
- Colter Wehmeier
- Patrick Aleo
Faculty Fellowship Award
- Anita Chan
- Ben Grosser
- Karrie Karahalios
- Karen Rodriquez
- John Toenjes
Press release about the awards.
Undergraduate Fellowship Award
- Erica Pereira
- Project: Visualizing and Preserving Environmental Data for Improved Governance
- Mentors: Dr. Anita Chan and Dr. Ben Grosser
- Nicole Pontaza
- Project: Eye Tracking Race and Cultural Difference in Video Games
- Mentors: Dr. Jodi Byrd and Dr. Ben Grosser
- Rishabh Rajagopalan
- Project: Music Composition and Sound Design on High-Performance Computers
- Mentor: Dr. Sever Tipei
- Adhithya Bhaskar
- Project: Replicability and Reproducibility in Computational Physics
- Mentors: Dr. Victoria Stodden and Dr. Matthew Krafczyk
- Thuong (Jolie) Ha
- Project: Visual Analytics for Precision Medicine
- Mentor: Dr. Collen Bushell
- Chuhan Yu
- Project: Developing a Support Tool for Optimising the Presentation Format of a Biofeedback Training Program Used in Stress Management
- Mentor: Mr. Kiel Gilleade
- Hannah Kim
- Project: Developing a Support Tool for Optimising the Presentation Format of a Biofeedback Training Program Used in Stress Management
- Mentor: Mr. Kiel Gilleade
- Nick Zhaoyuan Su
- Project: Developing a Support Tool for Optimising the Presentation Format of a Biofeedback Training Program Used in Stress Management
- Mentor: Mr. Kiel Gilleade
- Xun Lin
- Project: Virtual Reality & Ray Tracing for Computational Materials Science
- Mentor: Dr. Andre Schleife
- Jinlin Xu
- Project: Virtual Reality & Ray Tracing for Computational Materials Science
- Mentor: Dr. Andre Schleife
- Jake Pisarski
- Project: Developed an interactive game show style activity to inform local seniors on the risks of financial scams
- Affiliation: Design for America
- Angela Chan
- Project: Developed an interactive game show style activity to inform local seniors on the risks of financial scams
- Affiliation: Design for America
- Craig Santo
- Project: Web Programming and Real-Time Scientific Visualization Research
- Mentors: Dr. Donna Cox and Ms. Kalina Borkiewicz
- Jasmine Shih
- Project: Web Programming and Real-Time Scientific Visualization Research
- Mentors: Dr. Donna Cox and Ms. Kalina Borkiewicz
- Hyun "Jinny" Kang
- Project: UI/UX Design
- Mentor: Kalina Borkiewicz
Graduate Fellowship Award
- Colter Wehmeier
- Kyungho Lee
Faculty Fellowship Award
- John Toenjes
- Anita Chan
Press release about the awards.
Dawn Anh Nguyen – Art & Design
Project scope: Web design, VR design, multimedia, UI/UX
Mentor: Kalina Borkiewicz – Advanced Visualization Lab
Craig Santo – Computer Science
Project scope: Virtual Reality
Mentor: Stuart Levy – Advanced Visualization Lab
Jasmine Shih– Computer Science
Project scope: Web programming
Mentor: Jeff Carpenter & Kalina Borkiewicz – Advanced Visualization Lab
Jasmine Shih – Computer Science
Project scope: Web development
Mentor: Kalina Borkiewicz & Jeff Carpenter – Advanced Visualization Lab
Haoming Lai – Computer Engineering
Project scope: Data wrangling
Mentor: Kalina Borkiewicz & Stuart Levy – Advanced Visualization Lab
Zhongshen Zeng – Computer Science
Project scope: Virtual Reality
Mentor: Kalina Borkiewicz & Stuart Levy – Advanced Visualization Lab
Ziqiao Ding – Computer Science
Project scope: NCSA's Advanced Visualization Laboratory
Mentor: Kalina Borkiewicz & Stuart Levy – Advanced Visualization Laboratory
Shuting Li – Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project scope: NCSA's Advanced Visualization Laboratory
Mentor: Stuart Levy & Kalina Borkiewicz – Advanced Visualization Lab
Colter Wehmeier – Architecture
Project scope:
Sara Pelaez – New Media
Project scope: General projects
Mentor: Jeff Carpenter – Advanced Visualization Lab
Sara Pelaez – New Media
Project scope: General projects
Mentor: Jeff Carpenter – Advanced Visualization Lab
Hao Gao – Computer Science and Mathematics
Project scope: Autonomous, vision-based systems for monitoring construction projects
Mentor: Guy Garnett – NCSA Faculty Affiliate/eDream Institute
Hilal Habashi – Computer Science and Mathematics
Project scope: Investigate and develop mobile apps to enhance the experience of audiences of dance, theater, and music performances at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts
Mentor: John Toenjes – NCSA Faculty Affiliate/Department of Dance
Matthew Ho – Physics
Project scope: Developing gestural interfaces for high-level qualitative control of complex systems
Mentor: Guy Garnett – NCSA Faculty Affiliate/eDream Institute
Mingwei Hu – Computer Science
Project scope: Integrate AVL's Virtual Director camera choreography and remote collaboration software with yt, a fast parallel volume software renderer
Mentor: Donna Cox – NCSA Advanced Visualization Laboratory/eDream Institute
Annie Rong – Computer Science
Project scope: Integrate AVL's Virtual Director camera choreography and remote collaboration software with yt, a fast parallel volume software renderer
Mentor: Donna Cox – NCSA Advanced Visualization Laboratory/eDream Institute
Constantine Roros – Computer Engineering
Project scope: Developing gestural interfaces for high-level qualitative control of complex systems
Mentor: Guy Garnett – NCSA Faculty Affiliate/eDream Institute
Bentic Joseph Sebastian – Aerospace Engineering
Project scope: Developing gestural interfaces for high-level qualitative control of complex systems
Mentor: Guy Garnett – NCSA Faculty Affiliate/eDream Institute
Utsav Shah – Computer Science
Project scope: Investigate and develop mobile apps to enhance the experience of audiences of dance, theater, and music performances at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts
Mentor: John Toenjes – NCSA Faculty Affiliate/Department of Dance
Shunhua Fu – Computer Science
Project scope: Developing a mobile port and GUIs for visualization and investigating the optimization of 4K compression and rendering
Mentor: Donna Cox – Advanced Visualization Laboratory
Shubham Gupta – Computer Engineering
Project scope: Working on integrating 3D gesture recognition into Virtual Director using Leap Motion
Mentor: Donna Cox – Advanced Visualization Laboratory
Yong Won Hong – Statistics
Project scope: Studying motion detection and the meaning of motion for use in human-computer interaction
Mentor: Guy Garnett – Illinois Informatics Institute
Colter Wehmeier – Architecture
Project scope: Developing new digital workspaces and presentation techniques by integrating methods from various virtual environments
Mentor: Donna Cox – Advanced Visualization Laboratory
Kiersten N. Jabusch – Illinois Informatics Institute
Project: Visualizing Moving Stories
Mentor: Guy Garnett – Illinois Informatics Institute/eDream
Jonathan Kirby – Computer Science
Project: Logging and Synchronization in Virtual Director
Mentor: Donna Cox – Advanced Visualization Laboratory
Austin Lin – Theater
Project: Making Art Happen
Mentor: Donna Cox – Advanced Visualization Laboratory
Lauren Blackburn – Graphic Design
Project scope: Exploring visualization techniques for analyzing precision farming data and medical information
Mentor: Colleen Bushell – Visual Analytics
Jonathan Kirby – computer science
Project scope: Logging and Synchronization in Virtual Director
Mentor: Donna Cox
Zubin Pahuja
Laura Makdah
Nathan Russell – Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering
Project scope: Working on data modeling and machine learning techniques applied to precision farming
Mentor: Colleen Bushell – Visual Analytics
Sanny Lin – graphic design
Project scope: Visualizing Moving Stories
Mentor: Guy Garnett
Roshan Murthy
Shan Zou
Virtual Venues Festival
On April 30, 2014 as part of the SPIN student presentations, eDream student collaborators from CS493 Senior Project II will present a collaborative game played over the network with Univesity of California, Irvine.
1. Overview
This Tele-Art Performance Event is a game played between audiences at each venue. The game is based upon the eight Effort Qualities of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). Scoring is based on the audience’s ability to recognize the Laban Effort Qualities exhibited in the dancers’ movement improvisations.
The venues are joined via videoconference and a web application. Each venue projects the video conference image on one screen, the game ‘landscape’ on a second screen, and the scoring on a third. The game is played by audience members using a cell phone app. Dancers could either be only UCI dancers live at UCI and via teleconference at UIUC, or two sets of dancers live at each location. If UCI dancers only are performing, then scoring will have to be delayed according to the videoconference latency time amount.
Music is playing during the event. This music is tied (somehow) to the progress of the game and/or movement improvisation. Alternatively, the music uses the Effort Qualities as the basis for improvisation, thereby giving more clues as to the Effort Shapes.
2. The Game
A) The event begins with a LMA expert delivering a short lecture/demonstration on Laban Effort Qualities.
B) Then the first level begins. A landscape (of some sort) appears on screen, as two dancers begin their movement improvisations, each one dancing with only one effort quality.
The audience must make an educated guess as to what effort quality each dancer is using. When they decide to guess, they press a button on the cell phone (or point their camera at an Augmented Reality (AR) target). This information is collected by the app and sent to the server for tallying. As they make their guesses, the landscape changes (somehow) to reflect this input. The scoring is also shown on the other screen, perhaps as Effort-Shapes images rising and falling in height as guesses are accumulated and tallied.
The first audience to reach a certain percentage of players guessing correctly wins that round (only X number of guesses per player).
C) Additional Levels:
Level Two runs basically as Level One, only there are four dancers involved in the movement improvisation, and four Effort Qualities.
Level Three uses two dancers, but each dancer incorporates two Effort Qualities in their improvisation. The audience has to guess which two Effort Qualities are being used by each dancer.
Level Four uses four dancers, each dancer incorporates four Effort Qualities in their improvisation. The audience has to guess which four are being used.
More levels could be made, or another match could be played, starting at the beginning.
3. Discussion and Q&A
After the game is over, the winning side is the victor. There is a discussion and Q&A session between audiences at both venues.
This work is a continuation of the effort that started with the interactive application created for Mikel Rouse's "The Demo" which premiered in January at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts.
NCSA has a history of encouraging and nurturing innovative concepts. Some of the best ideas have come from highly motivated, creative undergraduate students working on NCSA challenges, or pursuing their own ideas with inspiration from colleagues and mentors. If you are looking for a unique opportunity to explore your potential, apply for a SPIN (Students Pushing Innovation) Fellowship.
Questions regarding the application process should be emailed to SPIN@illinois.edu.
