Quick summaries of important people and things.
Timo is my direct mentor, which means he explains everything (and then some) to me and lets me eat up all of his time. He happens to be excellent about knowing something about anything that comes up in conversation (e.g. the effect of daylight savings on cows), play the piano, and wear cool socks.
Florian sits next to me, which means he helps out with a lot of annoying things that I should probably already know, like how to run software. He also has a plant at his workstation (admirable because taking care of plants is difficult), doesn't hate Jar Jar Binks, and doesn't (slash pretends not to) mind when Slart suffers an asthma attack in the middle of the day.
Yoichi's been part of SARA since SARA was a thing, which is pretty cool, and he has the most aesthetically satisfying, best-kept journal (for work/ideas, I think?) I've ever seen. He's also an award-winning cat photographer, and someday, he's going to go to space.
Lauren is the lab manager, and she loves elephants. She's also super organized, has sticky notes in assorted colors (one of my favorite phenomena) around her desk, and cheerfully tolerates all the random questions/comments I throw at her throughout the day (her workstation is next to mine).
Samantha runs reading group on Thursdays and does acrobatics on Sundays. She is excellent at being energetic, summarizing things, and awarding House Cup points.
Pranav is a fellow SARA intern, and he is a) polite enough to not mind that I once made him at least 15 minutes late for lunch and b) adventurous enough to help me scout out various places to eat lunch on campus. He actually reads DC comics (as opposed to just watching the movies), plays slash watches sports, and has access to free bus rides.
Jingya is a fellow SARA intern and fabulous illustrator, and she's incredibly patient with my tendency to talk her ear off/switch topics mid-sentence. Sometimes we exchange glances and subsequently burst into laughter; neither of us are sure why, but it's pretty funny nonetheless.
Wei is a fellow SARA intern who makes my scathing face annotations of Davos participants (evaluations of face management for people who spoke with SARA at Davos) look particularly scathing, mostly because his annotations are too nice. Also, his optimism is both admirable and contagious.
Slart (short for Slartibartfast) is my laptop--more specifically, a highly intelligent MacBook that I've gotten better at being friends with over the past two years (it took me nearly the entire first year, for instance, to figure out how to scroll). Sometimes (usually when Android Studio is open) he has asthma attacks, which is super loud and not fun.
The ArticuLab is a lovely place with workstations for everyone, a gigantic closet, and a fantastic conference room (includes: kitchenette with incredibly organized cabinets, word magnets on the fridge, and nearly-ceiling-to-floor whiteboard panels (against light green walls--an important distinction because at my university, we have whiteboard walls beside white walls, which has resulted in quite some 'if's and for's and 'System.out.print's permanently etched on the latter)).
| Name | Vivian Tsai |
|---|---|
| School | Johns Hopkins University |
| Department | Whiting School of Engineering |
| Grade | sophomore |
| Major | Computer Science, Applied Math & Statistics |
| Website | click here |
| Name | Justine Cassell |
|---|---|
| School | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Department | Human-Computer Interaction Institute |
| Area of Research | human-computer interaction |
| Website | click here |