The first time moving for a co-op job, I worked in-person 5 times a week. Since I was essentially treated as a graduate student, this work term really opened my eyes as to how things functioned in academia. Similar to industry, there are plenty of meetings and lots of code being written, but seeing my peers researching novel ideas and exploring new fields of research is quite inspiring. This term also required me to read a lot of papers to get knowledge, since I donāt have any background in meteoroids and camera observation networks. Reading these papers was really enjoyable, and combined with the educational environment, Iāve started to consider attending graduate school myself.
As a city, London cannot quite compare to Toronto, but theyāve got a reliable transit system. Thereās even a bus route directly to the rock climbing gym. I consistently went 3x per week as a way to remain active and also to kickstart my social life in a new environment. I met a wide variety of people at the gym, and it was pretty sad to say farewell after growing close to people in 4 months. Iām sure our paths will cross again eventually.
What I Did
- Developed a machine learning model to predict future meteor shower flux with an accuracy of >85%
- Created a robust dataset of over 1000 stars across multiple cameras for training and cross-validating the above model
- Delivered a presentation of said model and the process of getting to this model to 3 NASA engineers
- Drank a lot of coffee at the graduate coffee hours :)
What I Learned
- A lot of background knowledge in meteroids and meteor shower flux
- Actual practical applications of statistic concepts taught in class (confidence intervals, p-values, etc)
- The graduate student lifestyle (a lot of researching without knowing if an answer exists or notā¦)