Distributed Mentor Project: Mentoring Undergraduate Women in Computing Research Katherine Lau
Main Page Me and My Mentor Typical Week Research Project Weekly Journal Final Report Seattle
Week 1: June 11 - June 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 >
=REVIEW=
SUCCESSES failures/setbacks FrUsTrAtIoNs
~ accounts configured
~ found information seeking article
~ none so far ~ being patient and waiting for account configurations, and for group meeting to get a better idea of my responsibilities
~HIGHLIGHTS~
WednesdayThursdayFridayMondayTuesday
Arrived in Seattle! Lots of shopping. First day at work. I met Meliha, the Ph.D student I'll be working with, Prof. Wanda Pratt, my mentor, A.J. Brush, another DMP mentor at UW, and her mentees, Morgan and Tasha. I also met Prof. Batya Friedman who knows Allen, Lyn and Ellen from Wellesley. I rode my first Seattle bus, an express from Seattle to Tacoma, to meet my cousin who graduated today! I met Kris today. He's the first undergrad, who'll be working on the project, that I've met so far. Group meeting with Prof. Wanda Pratt, Ph.D students Meliha, Andrea and Kent, and other undergraduates Lisabeth, Kris, and Meredith. I found out that D. Lees wrote a master's dissertation on the information-seeking behaviour of medical researchers! A document exists!

I'm really excited!! This week I have settled into life in Seattle and at the iSchool Research Commons. I found out that my group will be using MySQL and Java in a linux environment. I might even get to apply my XML skills to this project later on! Yay!!

My iSchool account has been set up, and I can save files, print documents, change my password, access the linux account on the cluster machine, and even display this webpage!! I've read some papers about the research project, specifically a paper that gives an overview of the project and the five-year plan, and a paper that describes the text-mining algorithm.

At the group meeting on Tuesday, I had an opportunity to meet the other team members, and to hear what they'll be contributing to the project. I also found out that I'll be focusing mainly on the design and development of a collaborative interface. I'll be working closely with Meredith and Lisabeth who are working on the interface for text-mining, and with Kris, who is working on the interface for document management. Our group is going to meet once a week as a reading group to discuss papers that we have read. Then, we'll probably meet one or two more times per week to discuss and critique our interface mock ups.

I refreshed some of my linux, putty, ftp, and sql skills by downloading the latest version of UMLS (2003AA), and loading it onto the cluster machine. UMLS stands for Unified Medical Language System, and is the work of the National Library of Medicine (NLM).

My goal for this coming week is to read twenty papers about CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) and group interfaces, for background information and ideas for my interface. In a week or so, it will be my turn to present a paper at the reading group. I'd better get reading...