Introductions

Hello World! My name is Robin. If you’re reading this, you’ve found your way to my blog series all about the final stretch of my Computer Science journey at Oregon State University.  Over the next 9 months, I plan to fill this site with insights on my struggles and triumphs as I wrangle the last year of my undergraduate degree. I invite you all to join me on what I truly hope will be an exciting academic finale.

Every learning experience is best served by starting with the foundation of the subject. In this case, I suppose that’s me, so I’d better give you a little background on just who I am.

I live in beautiful Newport on the astounding Oregon Coast. This region often transcends gorgeous and moves on to ridiculously magical. Given the good fortune of having grown up in this town, you’d think that I’d be used it by now. Instead, my appreciation of the nature surrounding my home has only deepened. I spend a happy amount of time standing around and gawking at nature.

Even though I’m chronically busy with school, work, or being slack jawed at a good view, I find plenty of time to engage in my favorite personal pursuits.

Surfing and traveling are easily my favorite hobbies on the planet. It’s a fantastic coincidence that the two go together like peanut butter and granola. I’ve had the chance to go on a handful of surf trips down south, and each time leaves me with a sense of lasting gratitude for the opportunity.

I’m very passionate about the ocean. However, since I’ll probably never make it as a pro surfer, I have to find other ways to express my interest in the sea professionally. For the last 6 months, I’ve been lucky to work with Greg Wilson and his colleagues in the OSU Coastal Imaging Lab. There, I get to spend time honing my programming skills on an unexpected challenge: Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV).

There will be more to come on this subject in later posts. For now, I’ll just define PIV as a computational process in which the individual velocities of particles suspended in a fluid are tracked and measured. The resulting information can be combined with LiDAR data to programmatically understand the changes in velocity and spatial positioning of an ocean wave in the coastal environment! Greg hopes to use this technique to study wave run-up on beaches, perhaps discovering insights into coastal erosion.

Hopefully this post gave you a brief idea of who I am, and the things that inspire me day-to-day. I’m looking forward to writing more posts as the year goes on.

I’d love to hear from any of my readers, so leave a comment below if you’d like to hear more about a particular topic I’ve covered. Otherwise, catch you all next time!

— Robin