Clemson Research Experiences for Undergraduates

About Paris

My name is Paris Smith. I was born and still reside in Jackson Mississippi. I am also a Senior mathematics major at Jackson State University. I am the fourth of five siblings and will be the first female to have a college degree in my family! I plan on receiving my PHD and being a math professor after I complete my undergraduate degree. My hobbies include studying, shopping and participating in fun activities with my family. I have many research interests but most of my experience comes from bioinformatics, however, I'm really excited about new research experiences.

Project Description

I'm working with Dr. Andrew Mount and my research project consists of generating a visual catalog from radio-spectrographic data. The radio emissions being visualized are caused by Storms occuring on Jupiter.

Week 1

The first week of the program consisted of taking a few courses to aid our skills in linux, palmetto, and research. We began with linux, our instructors gave us background information on linux and aided us in the coding. The instuctions were very similar for palmetto, however the coding was slightly different. We also learned some researching skills. We had an instructor to lead us through various algorithms for each research area.

Week 2

The second week of this program I began to get more in depth with my research. My mentor gave me various programs that would aid me in doing my final research project. I had to set up a work station where I could work on these programs and learn their applications. My mentor set up meetings everyday to monitor my progress and answer any questions or concerns that I may have had.

Week 3

The third week of the program I started to get more in depth with my project. There were many elements to be considered in order to properly complete the project. I began by downloading three different programs. Those programs were Radio-sky, Radio-Spectrograph, and Radio-eyes; all of which were outer space storm tracking systems. I also retrieved most of my data from my mentor and it was downloaded at a work station in a lab named Barre Hall. I along with my other cohorts, was also required to began working on my abstract in which there was a course provided in order to help us complete them with ease.

Week 4

The fourth week of this program was very demanding. I had familiarize myself with all of the software programs that were previously given to me in week 3. I received most of my data and began to create a visual catalog of storm events occurring outer space. Most of my time was spent creating folders to distribute each aspect of a storm event with its correct day and time. I along with the group, was also required to create an elevator pitch regarding my research, this was done so we could learn how to make it appeal to others. This was a valuable skill because not only could I apply this to my research but other aspects of any future career.

Week 5

The following week was a continuance of creating my catalog and I prepared for the midterm presentations that were administered on Wednesday. The presentations contained an example of my catalog and an example of my future plans of the collaboration of Worldwide telescope and the storms that were found in spectrgraphic data.

Figure 1: The visual below is an example of the catalog that I have done. This visual describes a storm that took place on January 14, 2014. It was known to be a Jupiters storm because of the pattern of the waves on this spectrograph.

Figure 2: I also used Jupiters Pro software to track Io's location at the time that the storm took place. The following picture below is a visual.This visual shows that this storm was an Io-C storm. Some storms may be in the range of the Io A,B, and C storms however if Io isn't in the intensity ranges of 25 % of the max or more we call these non-Io A, B, and C storms.

Figure 3: The visual below are my plans for the remainder of the program.

Week 6

On Tuesday after the break we met with Dr. Gemmil and read research papers discussing Visualization techniques with Colors Scheme. On Tuesday we met with one of the first and still very active CIO's and VP for Computing and Information Technology at Clemson, Mr Jim Bottum. He gave us alot of his background information on how he got earned his position at Clemson and the many breakthroughs in computing throughout his career. It was very pleasing for my cohorts and I to be able to have that very exclusive interview with him and he even decided fund the members of cohort that previously weren't able to receive funding to go to the NSF conference in St. Louis MO. Afterwards my mentor Dr. Andrew Mount discussed his research background in a presentation powerpoint. He also gave insight on my project: Visualization of Jupiter’s Radio Storms Using Worldwide Telescope and my cohort, Caroline Zhangs project: Stuck at Sea, which he also is working on. We ended our week at Clemson with Dr. Gabriel Hankins with some great graduate school tips. We left Clemson and headed to Charleston on Friday for a mini-conference at the College of Charleston. We experienced great preperation for other conferences and we received insight on projects that other students were working on at other Universities. The weekend was full of great experiences through sight seeing, wonderful meals and the beautiful beach. Two things that I learned from the conference were to look into the fact that Io may be causing a reaction with other moons, and to clarify if there are any trips being planned to Jupiter and is that the reason behind monitoring the storms.

Week 7

Week 7 was started with a session on research ethics with Dr. Tanner then we met with a very important man by the name Of Dr. Vernon Berton He gave insight on his history and his role here at Clemson. On Tuesday we met with Dr. Bernice Rogowitz. She showed us some of her past work with visualizaton and gave insight on things we could incorporate into our projects to make them better. On Wednesday we met with Nick Paschvoss to learn how to write coverletters and gather skills to have a successful interview. Dr. Oyewole also met with us and showed us his work, he also gave visualization advice. We also had a very fun workshop with Dr. Jon Hoskin. We learned about chocolate and its origins and even tasted different kinds of chocolate. We also continued a graduate seminar session with Dr. Gemmil.
View my CCS/REU mini conference PowerPoint presentation...

Week 8

Week 8 was wonderful, we actually finished up our research and worked on our presentations most of the week. The final presentations were amazing.We engaged with one another and learned alot more about what each cohort was doing. I immediately began packing up for St. Louis after my presentation. This REU has been an amazing experience and I'll remember it for a lifetime!

Project Summary

The final product of my resarch project was mostly creating my catalog of different Jupiter Storms. I also conducted research to learn more about jupiters magnetofield to test my hypothesis that other moons may contribute to the storms taking place.

View my final poster presentation

Last updated: July/26/2015