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Week 1 - Introduction Learning MATLAB + Beginning Research on CDOM + General Thoughts +Goals
Submitted by Shah on June 24, 2010 - 4:14pm
- Introduction: My name is Priyam Shah, I graduated from Sunset. I will be attending USC in the fall where I hope to major in Electrical Engineering. I have known about CMOP for a while as I participated in an international science fairs with Avilash Cramer and Jing Zhang two stellar interns who worked here last summer. I am excited to be working in this cutting edge research and I look forward to learning a lot of skills. I was interested in interning at CMOP becuase, I knew nothing about this topic and it was something that I wanted to learn about. I also hoped that I could utilize my strenghts contribute to this science.
- Over the last two days I have learned MATLAB under Grant's tutelage. I have learned how to work with and manupilate matrices. Specifically, I have learned how to do basic functions such as arithmetic and also physically manupiliating the matrices. I have also learned how to plot data that was plotted in matrices.
- I am beginning to do research on CDOM - colored dissolved organic matter - which has a lot of potential applications. especially for determining dissolved organic carbon content of natural waters and for tracing coastal water masses. However, there is not a lot of literature on CDOM I found, although there is a lot of research done on DOM (dissolved organic matter). There may be research done, I'm just having trouble finding it. A lot of the research done on CDOM deals with the "C" in terms of the absorption of electromagnetic rays. Any suggestions?
- I have the pleasure of working with a lot of interns (both undergraduate and high school interns), although I am sad to say haven't gotten all their names down. I have however gotten to know my fellow interns who are working under Dr. Baptista specifically: Julia, Sierra, and Monica. You tend to get to know people when you are sitting a few feet from them, even when you are in front of a computer.I"m really excited to get to know them a lot better becuase I think they are awesome people! Further, I am very pleased to be working in here where I am surrounded by so many brialliant staff and graduate students. I look forward to getting to know you all.
- My goals:
- I want to learn more about CDOM and at least become sonewhat of a knowledgeable person about CDOM.
- I want to figure out a way to model or simulate how CDOM interact with the other factors which are measured espeically dissolved oxygen, salinity, and temperature.
- I want to be able to utilize differntial equations and programming (maybe I'll pick up some FORTREAN) to hopefully model how CDOM distributes itself over the Columbia River Basin and the plume. If not I'll hopefully use another developed model and just modify it.
- I also hope to fit in some lab work and figure out some biogeochemical reactions of CDOM and its effect on chemical processes and other lifeforms (espeically microscopic life forms) in the river.
- Hopefully I can gain some conclusions from this on CDOM.
- That's all for now! More to come later!
