Tag: grants

EAPSI Alum Advice for Applicants

Pink lotus blossom

I have been getting questions about the EAPSI application process, so I thought I would save everyone some time and write a quick blog post about my experience. I will probably update this as needed (when I think of new things or someone asks me a new question).

Firstly, for those who don’t know what EAPSI is, it is a summer internship opportunity that is funded through the NSF that gives student researchers a chance to conduct research in various Asian/Pacific countries. As an EAPSI 2014 Fellow, I was able to spend 10 weeks in Hiroshima, Japan conducting research at the university there. NSF has a lot of really great information on their website, which I highly encourage you to read through if you are thinking about applying.

As a caveat, my experiences are particular to the Japan EAPSI fellowship. Each country has a different relationship with NSF, differing numbers in terms of applicants they will take, etc. For instance, it is a fact that the countries where the primary language spoken is English have a much lower acceptance rate. The non-English speaking countries, like Japan, have much higher acceptance rate (I heard the number 40% floating around, but can’t verify that).

Now, I’ll present my advice as someone who had their fellowship application accepted.

  1. You have to have a good idea of who you will be working with in the country of your choice. In face, you will not get accepted as a fellow without a letter of support from that person. What I did for Japan is searches on the web for anyone who might be related to my area. When I didn’t hear back from anyone, I had my advisor send some emails. In the end, I found someone who was not directly in my field, but he was someone who could use my expertise (as someone who can built and evaluate tech). We emailed back and forth several times, while I worked out a potential summer study plan*. SAVE all these emails and attach them to your application. NSF wants proof that you have a working relationship of some kind with your potential host.
  2. You don’t need international experience, so don’t stress it. It’s more important that for your application that you have a relationship with your potential host researcher (see #1). You also don’t need to be able to speak the language of your country of interest. NSF is more interested in sparking collaboration and giving students a new opportunity.
  3. Have very clear Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts categories in your application. If you have applied for the GRFP, then you know how important these categories are. Make sure you have lots of both.
  4. It needs to be clear that you know how to plan a research project that will take place in the allotted time. You only have 8 or 10 weeks, depending on which country you go to. That’s not very much time at all. Be able to articulate the work you will do leading up to the summer and how you will possibly extend your work (and your new international collaboration) into the future after the summer has finished.
  5. Look through the slides and handbooks from the NSF EAPSI website. These were super informative for me when I was writing my proposal and application.

Here are the quotes from my IM and BI categories of my proposal:

Intellectual Merit. The intellectual merit of this project includes an examination of how designing assistive technology can occur in a cross-cultural practice, particularly between Japanese and American researchers. This project will also result in a prototype of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) device for Japanese speaking users. In addition, the work from this project will contribute to the development of a framework to facilitate cross-cultural design of assistive technology. I plan on disseminating the results of my proposed work through academic publication at conferences, such as CHI and UBICOMP, and relevant academic journals.

Broader Impacts. This project will ultimately benefit children with ASD, their caregivers, and with which peers they interact. The project will strengthen international ties between USA and Japan as I collaborate with researchers from Hiroshima University. This project will allow me, as an underrepresented student, to gain experience researching internationally. I intend to share this work and experience at conferences, such as the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, aimed at underrepresented students in both graduate and undergraduate school. This will bring awareness of my work to underrepresented groups in computing fields and help draw more women, minority, and students with disabilities to graduate school. I will also keep a blog during my experience in Japan on my personal website. As part of my studies at UCI, I plan to continue to mentor undergraduate students and to continue to develop technologies that can be used to assist children with disabilities.”

*In truth, this plan did not really end up happening due to a lot of different things, which is totally okay and normal. We still did some amazing research.

Additional questions can be left as comments here or emailed to me at kringlan [at] uci [dot] edu.

Hope this was helpful!

On Getting Into Grad School, Part 4

Did you miss Part 3?

March 2013: UC Irvine Visit and THE Decision

After leaving Boulder and hearing what students there had to say about their school, I was more inclined to accept Irvine’s offer. I wasn’t going to say with 100% certainty until I had visited the school and made sure I clicked with the people there, but based on the research that was happening and what I heard from others, Irvine was the way to go.

It did not take me long to feel like my initial instincts were correct. I got off the plane and already felt like I had come home. Now, I had to be cautious, because in a lot of respects, I had come home. I spent the first 12 years of my life in Southern California. I had decided that Kyle, my husband, needed to come with me on this visit. If this was going to be our home for the next 5+ years, I wanted to make sure it was going to work for him. He was not as impressed at first as I was. I knew what he meant about it not being “green”. The Pacific Northwest is definitely a lot greener, but I think that’s probably not the best reason to turn down a grad school offer. J  I also have to say the women huddled around the hot chicken case at the Whole Foods because it was under 70 degrees outside was extremely humorous.

When I checked us into the hotel, I was given a “goodie” bag with snacks and a folder full of information about the school and department. I think the snacks were a really great touch, even though I couldn’t eat most of them. I did enjoy the pudding cup and the Star Wars gummies. The information packet was definitely overwhelming. It had lots of information on what research was going on and other facts about the school. It also contained a hardcopy of my acceptance and award letter. There was also a schedule for Friday, which included what professors I was going to interview with.

Thursday night we had a dinner with the current Informatics grad students. It was great waiting in the hotel lobby and meeting up with some of the people I had met in Boulder. Already knowing a couple people made the whole experience slightly less daunting. The current grad students picked us up and we had a big dinner together. I got to meet my roommate that I will be staying with in Paris for CHI. I also met other students who I would potentially be working with in the future. And apparently my reputation preceded me because at least one of them already knew of me. I am going to admit, it was completely surprising, but also felt pretty good.

I came back to the hotel feeling very excited for the next day. If the grad students were any measure, I was really going to like this place. I’m going to admit, it was hard to share these experiences with Kyle and give him a good sense of how I was feeling. I think my excitement (and exhaustion) was pretty obvious though.

The next day, Friday, I got up early and had breakfast with Kyle. I then waited for the shuttle to take me over to the school. Apparently, there was some confusion and only have of the prospective students had signed up for a ride, so the whole day started a little more slowly than anticipated. We drove straight to the Bren School of Information and Computer Science. I received an additional packet of information that was more general to the entire School. The morning was spent going over all the great things about the school, “the second happiest place on earth” (after Disneyland, of course). Then we broke down into subgroups of Informatics, Computer Science, and Statistics. We spent more time talking about the Informatics department specifically. I learned about the degree, what kinds of courses I would be taking, the research, how the department operates. One of the things that really caught my attention (and this had come up at the grad student dinner as well) was that there seemed to be a lot of collaboration and cooperation. It didn’t feel like there was negative competition, it was more like everyone was trying to help everyone else out. That’s the sort of environment I was looking for.

Then I got to meet with three professors. While they all had really interesting research that I could see myself working on, I knew as soon as Dr. Gillian Hayes told me about the Autism Research Center, I was hooked. This was the sort of assistive tech research that I wanted to be doing. I told her in the interview that I was set to come to Irvine straight away. How soon could I start working?

**

I feel extremely fortunate that things have worked out this way. I feel lucky that I found a department that feels good and an advisor that I felt an immediate connection to. I know the road ahead will be challenging, but I’m happy that I chose this road or that this road chose me. However that works out.

Because It’s a FAQ…

I just wanted to write a short blog entry about this whole “grad school” thing because I’ve been getting some questions about what exactly it is I’ll be doing in the next few months.

This fall I’ll start towards my PhD in Informatics from the University of California Irvine. My research area is in Assistive Technology and I think I’ll be doing my work in the area of tech helping kids with Autism and chronic illness. I really won’t know my research space until I get into the work and get a feel for what I’m doing.

The way grad school works, at least in the field of tech and computer science, is that when a school offers you acceptance there is usually some sort of funding package that comes along with it. For instance, a lot of schools will offer 3 years of funding, which usually covers tuition and then gives you a monthly stipend. In order to earn that monthly stipend, depending on the school, of course, you work 20 hours a week doing research or TAing. In my case, I’ll be expected to TA one year and then do research projects for the remaining time in the program. After you second year or so, you have usually settled on an advisor and a research path and can start getting grants for the work you are doing. This will be in lieu of “working” for the department. I have been getting some questions as to how I’m going to live while getting my PhD and there is the answer: I’ll be getting paid to do it. Yes, it won’t be as much money as I could be making as a programmer straight out of my bachelor’s degree, but if I wanted to be a programmer, I wouldn’t be going to grad school. I’ll still be making way more money than I’m currently earning, and I guess that’s the perspective I’m going in with. I’ll be quite comfortable with what I have.

I’m going to grad school because I love doing the research. This is what I learned from completing my DREU at UMBC last summer. That really was the one of the best experiences I have ever had in terms of my own personal growth. At this point in time, I haven’t really thought PAST earning my PhD; it’s be a long road just to get this far. I’m sure that in due course, it will become apparent where I want to pursue my career, whether it is in industry or academia.

Do feel free to email me if this didn’t clear things up for you. I’m quite happy to talk about all the in’s an out’s! =D

Fall Week 6

This past week has been EXHAUSTING.  It was a whirlwind of exams and getting everything finished up for Grace Hopper.

GREs were on Monday.  I took about 3 hours and I’m happy with my scores.  They aren’t official for another week or so, but I got an estimate right after the test was over.  I’m glad I have one less thing to worry about when it comes to grad school applications.

Tuesday I had my Web Data Management midterm and Thursday was Algorithms. PHEW!  Both went well, I think.   We also gave the demo for our first team project in Web Data Management.  This was the first time I really had to do a demo for an instructor like this.  I had one demo for Systems in the spring, but it definitely wasn’t anything like this.  Now I know what to expect for next time- the prof actually asking us why we chose to do things certain ways, etc.

After exams finished, I was able to focus back on grad school stuff.  I’m working on getting my three essays written for the NSF grant, which is due Nov 13th.  I know that the deadline is going to come at me way too fast, so I want to get rough drafts written for everything.  I have a personal statement draft for grad school applications done, so I’m hoping to use at least some of that for NSF.  I’ve also got a draft of my previous research done.  All that’s left is the research proposal.  I have an idea for it, but I have to do some more background research first to make sure it’s viable.  I hope so because it will be pretty good, and go fairly painlessly (I hope) once I have the research bit done.

My CREU research is also experiencing some forward momentum, as I’m starting the process of collecting wattage data.  I’m hoping after I get back from Grace Hopper to have some more done!

Off to Baltimore!!

Fall Week 2

Well, as it might be imagined, I am super swamped.  I feel like I’m being pulled every which way and I need to get a better system for organizing my life.  I’ve this giant running to do list that is a little overwhelming.  I’ve started breaking things down by day and trying to organize one 24-hour period at a time.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve been trying to get my DREU final report finished up and sent off.  I’m actually quite happy with the results.  I migrated my work into LaTex and am starting to feel pretty proficient in editing in it.  I’m going to post my paper in my portfolio, if you’re interested.  I am a little bummed I couldn’t participate in some of the interviews and maybe work on getting something into CHI for this year.  I guess I could still possibly submit something for the Student Posters in January.  We’ll see.

I’ve also officially bought my plane tickets to Balitmore for Grace Hopper the first week of October.  I’m excited to have won the scholarship.  I’m looking forward to seeing Baltimore again too.  I’m already planning on meeting up with my friends from UMBC that I met during the DREU program.

I think that’s all for now.  I’m hoping I can use these blogs to get myself organized too.  We’ll see how it goes. 🙂

Fall Week 1

First week of school is already over.  I definitely hit the ground running.  I am taking Physics 2, Intro to Networking, Game Design, Web Data Management, Analysis of Algorithms, and Social Psychology.  Phew.  It’s going to be a bit of work keeping all my homework straight.

I also had my first CREU meeting.  I’m looking forward to doing some research this school year.  Find this whole “work/life” balance thing is going to be tough, but I have to just keep this up until I graduate in spring.  I’ll be doing more work with energy usage and the smart grid.  Our paper was accepted to the IEEE SmartGridComm, which is happening in November.  I’ve applied to travel funding, but I won’t find out if I get it or not until the end of September.

Lots of exciting things in store this fall.  Counting down to grad school application due dates and everything else super fun like that!

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