finally we met with professor zhou this week and showed her what we had. i just talked to her informally about my findings and what i'd picked up on but xinxin was prepared with an entire powerpoint presentation which was kind of intimidating. YY pretty quickly re-directed us before we finished because we needed to find a topic with a small enough scope for us to make a meaningful contribution. pretty amusingly, she pointed us in the direction of network connectivity because of problems she was having herself with her e-mail app and an app developed by a group of her own phd students called whova.
she also told me that she wanted me to stay on this project because i would be able to watch how a research area turns into a concrete project and paper. i'm glad she did because it is actually really interesting to watch the lifecycle of a project develop. i forget that resaearch ideas can start of so simply, from problems we encounter every day like trying to send an e-mail in a stairwell only to have it send two hours laters. i'm interested to see where this goes!