Category Archives: SIF Projects

First Steps in the Student Innovation Fellowship

  October 1, 2015 , , ,

My name is Saif Ali. I am a freshman Physics major at Georgia State University, so this is my first year as a SIF (Student Innovation Fellow). I will provide a short auto-biography of myself so that you, the reader, know whose work you are reading. I place my heritage in the country of Bangladesh where my family was born and raised, but I was born here in Atlanta which means I am first-generation American. I graduated from Woodstock High School in the Spring of 2015. At that point, I already knew I was going to GSU, but I was not aware of the SIF program. I became aware of this through the Honors College and immediately knew this is the place I wanted to be. Being exposed to this kind of academic atmosphere is the best way I can start my path to a career in science where research is the main focus of the job. I am mostly involved in the 3D 1928 Atlanta project. This project involves a team of four researchers and four builders who are re-creating 1928 Atlanta in an Oculus Rift setting. My assignment is researching Peachtree Street, also referred to as Whitehall Street during that time. I have accumulated a significant amount of photos that are from that era, but there are predictable problems that I have run into. I have found pictures that are dated around or on 1928, but I have also found many pictures of Atlanta from the 1930s. I … Continue reading

SIF Digital Humanities Projects Highlighted at GSU Scientific Computing Day

  September 20, 2015 , , , , , ,

Last week, GSU held its first Scientific Computing Day, a one-day symposium to foster interactions and collaborations between researchers at Georgia State University. The event provides researchers on the frontiers of computation research to present their work and exchange views with a multidisciplinary audience. As one might imagine, SIF collaborators have much to contribute to such an event, and the SIF was well represented, particularly in the digital humanities section of the conference, which was dominated by SIF-affiliated projects. A panel, which included Brennan Collins, Joe Hurley, Robin Wharton and previous SIF fellow Robert Bryant, discussed “How Technology Will Shape the Future of Humanities Research.” The panel’s presentation drew heavily on SIF-funded projects, including 3D Atlanta, 3D Modelling, and a variety of mapping projects.  SIF’s also contributed to the day’s poster-session, where Sruthi Vuppala and Dylan Ruediger presented a poster on “Digital Critical Editions of Medieval Texts: the Hoccleve Archive and the Digital Humanities.”  

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Reimagining Graduate Education in the Humanities through the SIF Program

  April 20, 2015 , ,

Last Friday, a panel of SIF fellows presented at the CIE Conference on Pedagogy. Due to some issues with time management on our panel, my remarks ended up being abbreviated considerably. So, I thought I’d throw them up here: “Reimagining Graduate Education in the Humanities through the SIF Program” A few weeks ago, I was attending a meeting of the GSU/GPC consolidation implementation committee. These meetings are usually nose-to-the-grindstone affairs, so I was surprised when the topic of innovation in higher education turned into a major part of the discussion. Among the participants in the little mini-debate that broke out on that topic was President Becker who made the comment that technology itself was not innovation. To illustrate this, he pointed to the strides GSU has made in lowering its number of drop outs and in helping students get their degrees in a shorter period of time. This progress was based in part on software that allowed GSU to track and identify students who were falling behind and in need of intervention from advising. But, as Becker pointed out, other universities who had purchased the same software had not seen the results from it that GSU had. As Becker put it, this is because innovation is the “marriage of process and technology.” He credited GSU’s success less with the software – important as that was — than with building a process to use the technology in efficient ways. Now, President Becker knows more about higher ed than I ever will. … Continue reading

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I hope you had the time of your life….a reflection on SIF

  April 20, 2015 , , , ,

As finals week quickly approaches, we are working at full capacity to bring projects to a space of completion.  And while the thought of the end of the semester brings along with the quintessential dialogue of, “…gosh…where did the time go?” Indeed, where did it go? It went into projects, big and small, that have brought new resources and information to the Georgia State community. Each click of the mouse bringing us closer and closer to the creation of a tool or resource which did not previously exist.  Through this post, I’d like to take a moment to look back and summarize the SIF experience. What you all have hopefully learned from me:  1) Maps have power  Maps, even within the current communication age which we are living in, still remain undervalued and misunderstood.  Maps gain our trust just by the mere act of being maps. They have the power to explain the world in ways that words do not. As I was told during a recent interview for my own thesis project, ” If a picture is worth a thousand words, a map is worth a million.” The ways we are making maps in changing. We should be critical of maps and understand the different viewpoints from which they are created 2) How to make your own maps  Throughout the blog post I have been able to offer a number of step by step guides to supply readers with some starting points to Google Earth  work and tools like Batch Geo. Additionally, over the year … Continue reading

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Intercoastal Collaboration and Innovation Abroad

  April 12, 2015 ,

As an archaeologist, it is understood that one must wear multiple hats – as it were. During my time at Georgia State University I have worn many – Anthropology Student, Archaeology Student, Mentor, Student Innovation Fellow and Graduate Assistant – to name a few. I am also a member of Proyecto Costa Escondida – an archaeological project which spans multiple institutions and fields. Through this project I have the opportunity to collaborate with other students from around the nation – and in fact the world. This semester I have been working on coordinating a field season with other members of the project from the University of California San Diego – Students of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3). This field expedition has a number of purposes within the scope of the Student Innovation Fellowship. Primarily – the students as CISA3 who joined me in Mexico this March are interested in the same sorts of uses for Unmanned Aerial Systems in scientific research that I have been working on this past 2 semesters. However, these students represent a cross section of the technical experts and innovators – though with different specific skill sets – similar to those students sought by the Student Innovation Fellowship The notable difference being that CISA3 is an established institution. CISA3 was able to provide incredible support for this field expedition, funding travel and accommodations and providing additional aircraft – in addition to the students. The goal of this collaboration was to … Continue reading