Emotion Modeling

The Top 4 Components of Elliott

2011-12-01T16:37:00.000-05:00

2011-11-18T23:31:00.001-05:00

Circuit Tree

2011-05-16T22:58:00.000-04:00

Here's a brief summary of my Circuit Tree. It's still in a prototyping stage but I'm quite glued to the idea.

My goal is to create a sculpture that encourages participants to interact with it and create collaborative art. Specifically I made the tree where each leaf, when touched, changes colors from an internal, bright LED . As all of the leaves are connected together, the tree can "shiver" when touched. Depending on how long an individual touches the leaf, the response can change. With 30+ leaves on the tree, this becomes a 3d interactive display - light bright 3.0 if you will. People can try to change all the leaves to one color or put patterns into the leaves. The tree then retains a history - why is the tree blue now, who did that?

As an additional part of my work, I measure people's physiological arousal - what makes them excited and frustrated. I'm planning on connecting my tree to wireless sensors that measure excitement. As a participant gets more and more excited, the tree changes colors. Perhaps, when calm the tree is blue, but as the audience becomes more excited, the tree changes red and starts flashing more dynamic patterns of color.

Chinese Paintings 2011

2011-05-16T21:55:00.002-04:00

Peer Reviewed Articles About Elliott's Research

2010-11-29T16:41:00.002-05:00

Occasionally, I am asked to provide articles about my research with Electrodermal Activity. The following three articles are must reads for my work.

Dr. Rosalind Picard describes her view for future work measuring emotional states. In her article, she mentions my work with Occupational Therapists.

Picard, R.W., "Emotion research by the people, for the people," Emotion Review, Volume 2, Issue 3 (July 2010)

For a hardware description of the tool we use to measure Electodemral activity refer to:

Fletcher, R., Dobson, K., Goodwin, M.S., Eydgahi, H., Wilder-Smith, O., Fernholz, D., Kuboyama, Y., Hedman, E., Poh, M.Z., Picard, R.W., "iCalm: Wearable Sensor and Network Architecture for Wirelessly Communicating and Logging Autonomic Activity," IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, vol.14, no.2, pp.215-223, March 2010. doi: 10.1109/TITB.2009.2038692

This article describes the difference between measuring EDA on the wrist compared to the fingers.

Poh, M.Z., Swenson, N.C., Picard, R.W., "A Wearable Sensor for Unobtrusive, Long-term Assessment of Electrodermal Activity," IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol.57, no.5, pp.1243-1252, May 2010. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2009.2038487

Vision Statement

2010-10-26T16:37:00.005-04:00

Throughout my work in clinical psychology, developing countries, and engineering, I am consistently frustrated with the gap between the people receiving a service and the people who design the service. Donors have little knowledge about how their donated medical equipment breaks down in Africa; clinical psychologists have few objective methods to evaluate change in their client’s mental health; engineers develop innovative products intended to help people but do not complete the circle by evaluating whether the products actually help the intended individuals.

I believe we can better these poor experiences by providing new ways for institutions to recieve quality, rich feedback on the experience of their product or service. If we can decrease the gap between designer and people’s experience, products and services can be improved. This would provide a solid basis for new, quality innovations that lead directly to people having happier, more fulfilled lives.

I hope to develop new methods and technologies to help people express their experiences – helping organizations become more empathetic and inspiring people to design new, better experiences for individuals. In addition to making new tools, I plan to develop quality ways of measuring the effectiveness of these new tools: how good are these tools at measuring experiences?

Using Physiological Arousal as a Marker for Emotional Experiences

2010-10-26T16:26:00.005-04:00

Summer 2010 - Present

As customers, products and services are an experience. Standing in a long line for a coffee may be a part of a frustrating experience. Seeing a picture of your family during a phone call may be a happy one. How do we measure these emotional experiences with products and services?

In this study, the LEGO group and I measured people's electrodermal activity—a marker of an arousing event—to enhance post-interviews about user's experiences: people provided deeper, more informative stories when asked to describe specific arousing moments.

Specifically, I designed and ran an experiment measuring the experiences of 50 different people with a new LEGO product. I conducted open ended interviews and asked people about specific moments when their EDA increased. I generated an internal paper identifying 17 key insights on how the LEGO Groups new product affects people's emotions. I worked with designers, writers, and administrators in realizing this project. In addition, to a report, I taught the LEGO group how to use these tools independently for future projects.

Masters Thesis: IN‐SITU MEASUREMENT OF ELECTRODERMAL ACTIVITY DURING OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

2010-10-26T14:31:00.006-04:00

Click on Picture for PDF
(Summer 2009- Spring 2010)

How could knowing a child’s electrodermal activity (EDA) during therapy change occupational therapy practices? As a joint project between the MIT Media Lab and the Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation, we measured the EDA responses of 22 children participating in occupational therapy for 77 hours. We saw children lying in a ball pit and their EDA correspondingly decreasing; we saw children’s EDA rapidly increase while they were swinging; and we saw many other patterns of responses from different therapeutic activities. Could we show how different guided activities changed children’s arousal with a statistical test? Analysis suggests that many factors play a role in changing children’s EDA, and these factors could not all be taken into account with our low sample size – making any statistical analysis inconclusive. As more tools begin to measure physiological data over longer periods of time, in less controlled settings, we should not forget to build a base understanding at the individual case level.

Chinese Paitnings 2009-2010

2010-10-26T14:22:00.001-04:00

Three Key Factors that Influence EDA in Observational Studies of Occupational Therapy

2010-10-26T14:17:00.006-04:00

Click here for Full PDF

Fall 2010

This poster was based off of my Masters Thesis

Behavioral Research Methods and Statistics

2010-02-21T15:16:00.002-05:00

Spring 2010

I created and co-taught the graduate course Behavioral Research Methods and Statistics for Spring 2010. The media lab has a lot of great ideas and I wanted to encourage students to critically analyze how they design their research to best learn about the effect of their ideas.

The class web page can be viewed here.

Selected Writings of 2009

2010-02-21T14:41:00.000-05:00

Alexithymia Grant Application

Using MANOVA to detect SPD

Learning to Read EDA Pre-Trial 2009

IMFAR Abstract 2009

Presentations 2009

2010-02-21T14:32:00.002-05:00

Speaker for Bank of America, Customer Service Summit. “Using Emotions to improve service”. February 3, 2009. Charlotte, North Carolina

Keynote Speaker for the SPD Foundation 9th International Symposium. “Taking Away the Guesswork:Objective Measurement of Internal State During Occupational Therapy”. October 8-10,2009. Chicago, Illinois.

Keynote Speaker for Think, Create, Engineer. “The Power of Being a Creative Engineer”. October 29-Novermber 1, 2009. Karnataka, India.

Academic Posters 2009

2010-02-21T14:24:00.005-05:00

Imfar 2009
Using Machine Learning can we separate children with SPD and ASD?

ACII 2009
Measuring Arousal Almost Anywhere

Are you Excited?

2010-02-21T13:37:00.001-05:00

Summer 2009- Spring 2010 with Dr. Rosalind Picard and Dr. Lucy Miller

Have you ever worked with a child and he just went out of control- running around, not paying attention, or just completely spaced out? Children with ADHD, Autism, and Sensory Processing Disorder can struggle with this daily. Many of these children I worked with could not go into a regular classroom as they would just "act out". As you can imagine their behavior can devastate their self confidence and social life.

For my Master Thesis, I measured 85 hours of Electrodermal Activity on both the child and therapist during hour long therapy sessions. While, I am still analyzing the data, initial results show that some activities (in this picture swinging) are effective in lowering the child's arousal. While this coincides with therapist's theories, this evidence can be shown to parents and teachers to help them understand how our behavior is linked to our internal state which can be controlled in fun ways.

The research I have done so far was included in the application for Sensory Processing Disorder to be a part of the DSM IV.

I worked closely with Dr. Lucy J. Miller and 5 amazing interns over the Summer of 2009 to make this project work.

Weekly Survey Measures in Clinical Settings

2010-02-21T13:21:00.004-05:00

Fall 2009- Spring 2010 with Dr. Rosalind Picard and Dr. John Weisz

One of the hardest challenges psychological clinics face is determining the effectiveness of their interventions. This makes being creative and trying new solutions a difficult prospect. Working with Proffesor John Weisz and the Judge Baker Children's Center, I have provided technical solutions to their new endeavor. The group hopes to have parents fill out surveys weekly reporting how their symptoms are doing.

While the concept is extremely simple, the challenge is to motivate busy parents to fill out the information. I am supposed to enter my workout minutes each day and I hardly ever do that. How can we motivate parents to do this? Using principles of Motivating Technologies by BJ Fogg, I hope to introduce new ways to motivate parents. Simple solutions could involve having a picture that grows and changes each time a survey is filled out. You can also compare a user's input to the average.

Unlike traditional engineering though, I hope to find solutions by working with parents who do struggle. I know what motivates me but finding out what motivates them is my end goal! By developing the solution off of real needs (instead of theoretical needs), I hope to find an effective solution to this basic problem.

Measureable results for Occupational Therapy

2009-01-08T20:10:00.003-05:00

Winter 2009- Spring 2009 with Dr. Lucy J. Miller and Dr. Rosalind Picard

Working with the SPD Foundation, I experimented with how our sensors can work with Occupational Therapists.

I tested our sensors vs. their gold standard sensors and then made observations on how the children's Electrodermal Activity changed while in therapy.

One child got extremely nervous everytime he had to speak into a microphone, but bowling and drinking water made him calm way down.

Another child would go into sparadic shifts with his EDA going way below normal and then way above normal.

While these observations in themselves do not lead to conclusions, they helped me develop a thesis topic and also to observe how functional our sensors are.

I appreciated this project because the therapists I was working with were excited (even more than I was). They had so many questions they wanted answer, they dreamt about how the technology could be used. Instead of forcing an awkward solution, I was providing means for therapists to answer their own questions.

Self Awareness Club

2008-08-08T15:20:00.000-04:00

Spring 2009

I started the Self Awareness Club. The club has over 50 members with different backgrounds. Each week different readings and activities are given. We explored how technology and self-awareness interacted. Are we doomed to live a future outlined by Wall-E or can technology help us become more aware of our selves? Below is the original invitation for the group:

This semester, I hope to start a reading group on a topic I feel is addressed in Media Lab classes, but never confronted straight on: Self Awareness (through Technology)

It seems that modern technology pushes further away from ourselves and our environment: TV, Cellphones, Fast Food, etc.

But this is only by choice, how can we make technology that actually encourages us to reflect back on ourselves?

This "reflection" can occur on many levels- Looking at your personal bank statement, getting instant feedback on your heart rate, seeing where you have traveled on googlemaps, etc. I imagine all of you work with this on some level.

The question I want to answer through this reading group is: What is the value of self-awareness and how can technology help people grow it?

This can take many different directions, depending on the direction the group wants to take it, some initial questions that popped up include:

1. Why is being self-aware important?

2. How can self-awareness accurately be measured or quantified?

3. Is being self-aware enough, or does it need to come with a motivation for change, and how is that applied?

4. Why is technology made to push people away from Self Awareness (TV for example)? Is there innate human desire to lose are awareness?

5. What are the effects of instantaneous feedback? (eg. showing someone their emotional state as they experience it)

6. What are previous methods that have been used to encourage Self Awareness?

7. Insert as many other topics as you want to cover here

The initial plan (though this also depends on group input) is to have a weekly meeting where we discuss 1 or 2 peer reviewed articles each week. My favorite part of learning is doing, so I hope we can make activities to do our own "mini experiments" based on the readings each week as well. (For example, wear a carrot on your neck all day, and analyze how much more do you look in on yourself, and why). With interest, each week can be taught by a different person, with their own passion in mind.

This is a 100% open group. That means there is no requirements, you can come, your professor can come, your grandma can come, and depending on Media Lab pet rules, your cat can come as well. Small caveat, professors who come must act like students :)

So if you are still reading this, you probably are somewhat interested, so please email me back with how you would like to participate. I see four levels so far:

1. Just put me on the Email list, I want to hear about what you are doing.

2. I'm planning on coming to at least the first meeting.

3. I am so there, this is awesome.

4. I want to help you set up the group, and help be a major founder in making this work

Please feel free to forward this to other people if you think they would be interested.

Thanks so much, I feel privileged to work in a lab that encourages me to follow my passions, and where others share that passion.

With love,

Elliott Hedman

Electric Zen Waterfountain

2008-08-01T21:54:00.004-04:00

Spring 2008

To watch the video in action click here:

Carol of the Bells
or
Sonar Demo

Working with a group of 5, we made the 'mini-belagio'. Making an embedded system board, hooking up lights and fish pumps, and even sonar, we created an interactive Senior project.

People could control how the water moved based off of where they moved their hands.

The water and colors could also change based off of music.

This project began my passion for building art out of electronics.

Research Assistant for Affective Computing

2008-08-01T21:01:00.001-04:00

Fall 2008-Present

Working with Affective Computing and Dr.Rosalind Picard, I am a research assistant while earning my masters degree.

Projects that I have worked on so far include:

Designing Tools to Measure Emotional States

Working with Ocupational Therapy to measure Treatment Effectiveness

I have worked with one UROP to develop software for these projects.

Teacher for Presidents Leadership Class

2008-08-01T20:30:00.000-04:00

Fall 2007, Spring 2008

Probably the most rewarding experience I have had is teaching the Presidents Leadership Class.

Now before you discount this as a Student Council, please take a look at our curriculum.

This class taught me how to make an actual change, build communities, measure effectiveness, and understand a global impact.

But instead of doing this theoretically, we read peer reviewed sources to learn. We go out and actually make the difference.

As a teacher, I worked with 10 of CU's top students each semester. Each week's lesson plan took me over 5 hours to make.

One week I gave the students 1 hour to make a real difference - they handed candy outside of classes.

Another week I asked my students to debate Cultural Relativism vs. Kant's Imperative (with the small twist that they had to argue the side they disagreed with)

I was not only a teacher, I was a friend. We did so many actiivities outside of class, and we still keep in touch.

I graded 100's of pages of papers and helped students think critically about the decisions they wanted to make.

Measuring Emotional Responses with Wireless Electro-Dermal Activity

2008-08-01T19:57:00.000-04:00

Fall 2008-Present

Advisor: Dr. Rosalind Picard

Click here for Research Web Page

Using features similar to a lie detector: Electrodermal Activity, Heart Rate, Temperature, and Vibration

I have helped develop wrist bands that can output these measurements live.

This project is currently being used with various projects including baby shoes and students with autism

I personally developed the software that can read the incoming data and flexibly display it in a variety of formats.

The laptop used is the XO (One laptop Per a Child). Not only is it affordable, but it is also very durable and can take quite a beating, which is great for 24 hour measurements!

EDA has been an expensive tool where people are required to be in a stringent setting: don't move sit personally still.

By making affordable, wireless, sensors, I hope to uncover new ideas for psychology by providing live measurements that can be taken 24 hours a day.

High Speed Digital Design

2008-06-02T22:17:00.001-04:00

Fall 2005, Spring 2006

Working with Dr. Melinda Piket-May, I spent a year researching electric magnetic wave simulations. I received: $1000 Learning Opportunity Grant and an $800 UROP grant to work on a programming environment for complex EM analysis. I used the LC programming language, which was developed as part of the CRAY institute.

MIT Graduate School

2008-06-02T20:12:00.003-04:00

2008-2014 (Expected)

I am currently working toward a Ph.D. at MIT.
Masters degree in September 2010
GPA: 4.8/5
My faculty advisor is Dr. Rosalind Picard with the Media Lab.
My research group focuses on Affective Computing, using technology to measure people's emotional state, and working with that information

University of Colorado at Boulder

2008-06-02T19:40:00.002-04:00

2004-2008

I graduated the University of Colorado at Boulder in May 2008.

With a degree in Electrical Computer Engineering and a certificate in the Study and Practice of Leadership .

My final transcript can be found here.
I was the only one in my major to graduate summa cum laude with a 3.82
I took various graduate level classes, including Embedded Systems and DSP Lab
I also took various classes outside of my focus including Spanish, Philosiphy, and Painting

Ecuadorian Organic Farmer Volunteer

2008-06-01T21:08:00.006-04:00

Summer 2008

What would you do if you were about to jump into 6 years of MIT? I have always had a passion for working with the developing world, but I never lived directly there for a long period of time. So over the summer I lived in Ecuador, volunteering on an organic farm in the middle of the amazon and traveling all around. Check out my blog of my adventures.

Through this experience my whole concept of w"helping people" flipped around. In a lot of ways the Ecuadorians can help us more than we can help them.

And taking showers in rivers, hunting guinea pig, and lifting rocks has its own enlightening qualities.

Visit my web page to find out more: http://ewondering.blogspot.com/

Repairing Medical Equipment in Africa

2008-03-03T15:33:00.001-05:00

Spring 2008

Power Point Presentation

Business Plan

After visiting Africa over break, I had to a chance to ask Dr. Jackson, CEO of Project: CURE what I, a motivated engineer, could do to help build a stable infrastructure in Africa. Dr. Jackson proceeded to tell me how Project: CURE leads the non-profit medical industry by donating over 40 million dollars of medical equipment to Africa each year. That said, no economy in Africa exists medical equipment when it inevitably breaks. All across the continent, a broken health monitor is doorstop. Equipment that determines whether people live or die, is sitting in the clinic’s closets. Furthermore, the few people who know to fix medical equipment (rarer than even doctors) are transported out of the country through brain drain. Currently, the best way to fix a broken piece of equipment is to hope to get a new one donated soon. This is how I started my long term partnership with Project: CURE, dedicated to fixing a simple problem, no organization in Africa is keeping the medical industry sustainable. As Dr. Jackson puts it, “Repairing Medical Equipment in Africa is the number one problem that needs to be addressed today”.

Working for Hasbro, a toy company

2007-06-01T21:42:00.001-04:00

Summer 2007

My dream job was to work at Wizards of the Coast, making games.

They held a competition where 1000's of people applied for one position. I didn't get it.

Then I asked myself, why not just ask for one personally, instead of applying.

I wrote a letter to the Vice President, and I got a response, I was hired.

Over the summer I helped develop flash script for the games. Instead of just hardcoding all day I was given the opportunity to design how the layout would look. I became an expert with photoshop, making icons for each character. I also dabbed into interface design figuring out how to make the game fun.

The strongest thing I took out of this internship is what it was lacking: service. I had so much fun, playing card games with the pros, being creative, living with my grandparents, but I never felt a sense of purpose. How was I going to change the world with this? That lead me to apply to grad school the next year.

Autonomous Robotic Control through BlueTooth

2007-01-01T22:09:00.002-05:00

2005-2007

I began a research project to develop a robot that could be controlled wirelessly through bluetooth.

I applied for and recieved a $700 and $1,800 grant from the CU Engineering Excellence Fund

I Created an Embedded System to communicate with the robot working with a 8052 Processor and a bluetooth module. This robot is able to show emotions and due various actions. There are sonar/heat/audio/camera/servo motor sensors.

Overall this project prepared me for my Capstone project, inspired me to start a robotics club and got me interested in DSP.

IBM research

2006-06-06T22:20:00.001-04:00

Summer 2006

Working Dr. Joan Mitchell at IBM, I analyzed the effects of color management on grayscale printing. Working on an IBM speed team (3 interns and 2 employees), to help IBM analyze the benefits of switching from color to grayscale.

As mass printing is switching to color printing, large amounts of investment will need to be made to switch company's logos/brouchures/etc. from grayscale to color. To alleviate this overhead cost, IBM is encouraging its clients to submit color images and still print them in gray, so that the transition will be more seamless.

IBM was curious to see how the quality of the image would change when color images were printed in grayscale. This involved using "color management" that shifted images from color to grayscale.

My role was to develop algorithms to print the colored images. As this was not on the market yet, I had to develop my own printer code (like assembly language) to send color images across and have them print using the "color management" feature. This was quite challenging as I had to be resourceful on how to print AFP code - often times talking to the people who created the standards for the code for advice.

In the end I was able to create a Java program, that would create a customized AFP code that could then be sent to programs.

I helped develop a Flash presentation for the final project.

Overall, our groups research was published at IBM and is now used by sales represenatives to show the

Learning Assistant for CSCI 1300

2006-01-01T20:51:00.002-05:00

Fall 2005

After finishing CSCI 1300 Computer Science: Programming I was invited to be a Learning Assistant for the next year class, in Spring 2006. This was quite a challenge at the time, as I had not taken any other programming course.
.
The course I taught followed the curriculum of Python Programming. I worked under Dr. Grunwald, my mentor.

10 hours a week, I taught students everything from "for loops" to "recursive functions". This was additionally challenging as the students who I taught needed additional assistance and had very little foundation.

Using creative methods, I taught students new concepts by providing cognitive problems and paradigm shifts. Imagine teaching a student from Africa who can barely speak english how a for loop works.

By the end the students were able to make a fully running tic-tac-toe AI and solve the Traveling Salesman Problem using a recursive program in C.

Being a TA here fortified my skills in programming and ignited my passion for teaching. I still keep the relationships I made with the students I taught in this class.

Experimenter Effect with EDA

2006-01-01T20:22:00.002-05:00

Spring 2007

One of my favorite classes I ever took looked very thoroughly at all the research done on Psychic research. Feomm telekinetic to precognition, we analyzed the research done with thorough scientific reasoning. As a side project I ran my own Psy experiment. We tested the effects of remote staring. I constructed a galvanic skin response that could read people's physical response to stimuli (this same contraption is used in lie detector tests).

Recruiting over 100 people, including 4 PhD's, we ran our own official psychic experiment. In the end we were invited to present our results to the Society of Scientific Exploration at a conference in Utah. Below I have some of programs I developed for this research. Whether you believe in psychic phenomena or not, hopefully you can appreciate my MatLab code and Flash skills:

Flash Presentation

This presentation was used to demonstrate our results at a scientific conference. I don't know how much sense it will make without me explaining the experiment :).

Matlab Data Analysis

This Matlab file took a LARGE amount of data, and formatted with various forms of Fourier Transforms and derivatives. We were then able to analyze our results visually and numerically.

Python User Interface

This user interface made it so various doctoral physicists could run these experiments. (Which they did).

Resident Advisor for CU

2005-06-01T21:20:00.000-04:00

Fall 2005-Spring 2008

As soon as most people read RA (GRT in MIT terms), they read 'nark' or think of some authoritarian figure with aviator glasses on. See me during our hall snowball fight for 'angry me'.

Well that's not how it goes at all for me. I loved being an RA. Being that ceaseless friend, helping people, and being part of a strong community have been some of my favorite memories. I have been an RA at CU Boulder for 3 years.

Because of my work I was nominated for the AIMHO outstanding RA role.

I also was the "Senior RA" my Senior year, where I spent my time teaching other people how to be RA's.

Some of my favorite activities:

Ski Trip up to Keystone Resort
Dodgeball Games
Yoga
Wii and Rockband Nights
Infinite number of Hall Dinners
Movie Nights

Some of the more intense things I have dealt with:

Flaming Pizza Boxes
Grocery Carts off the Balcony
Roomate Conflicts
Alcoholism/Alcohol Poisoning
Suicide Attempts
Arsonists
Drug Dealers
Guns in rooms
Eating Disorders
Relationship problems
Academic Problems
and once a SWAT team knocked on my door at 6am in the morning

Being an RA allowed me to create strong communities, help people, and develop meaningful relationships.

Wireless Tracking through Robotics

2005-06-01T21:07:00.001-04:00

Summer 2005

Working with Dr. Dirk Grunwald and Dr. Greg Grudic I spent Summer 2005 developing a robot to detect wireless internet signals.

recieved $4,500 NSF grant for undergraduate research
developed a planning and control system for the ER1 robot
collected data to be used with a Nearest Neighbor Algorithm.
helped show how individuals could be tracked through wireless internet signal strength

We used the nearest neighbor algorithm to predict specific locations where the robot would be. Our research showed that wireless signals bounce too much for precise location.

Through this research I bumped into many obstacles: the robot's direction was skewed on carpet, developing the interface, and analyzing the loads of data I received.

I programmed the robot to talk with people from remote text commands. In addition the robot could sing and dance which was fun to do while collecting data to unsuspecting prospective students.

The above data shows what my robot analyzed. Each one of these was one wireless stations strength, with over 200 actually being analyzed. As you can see the variablity of strength made the data fairly inconsistant. If I were to continue on this experiment, I would attempt to use more sophisticated machine learning algorithms (perhaps Randomized Forrests) to deal with the chaos of the data.

IBM Leadership Researcher

2005-01-01T21:35:00.000-05:00

Spring Semester 2006

As part of the Presidents Leadership Class, we were required to take an internship where we are in contact with the leaders of a company. I chose IBM.

I knew IBM was not me. The last thing I am is a cog in a machine, headed in a direction that no one is pushing.

But I wanted to understand how major engineering firms work and what motivates people.

I spent a semester working within the Printing devision and interviewing everyone, from the secretaries to the Vice President.

While I will probably not work for IBM, this internship helped me understand what is important to me as an engineer, and how I need to take personal leadership to get where I want to be.

In the end I produced a paper encouraging IBM to embrace more personal innovation. Encourage employees to change how their job works and what their jobs do. And reward it!

Math Quiz #7

2004-01-01T20:29:00.002-05:00

Click Image for Video

Spring 2004

My Senior year in high school I began my passion for developing flash videos. In one day, which happened to be mother day (sorry mom), I developed the above movie. While I did not know how to code back then, this movie shows my love of bending Flash's rules and showing things in a new perspective. I created this movie to compete in a movie competition against other begging film developers and I won first place at the Tiger Film Fest in Summit County. I was invited to submit my video to the Breckenridge Film Festival and this video can be seen every night at 11pm on Summit TV.