Research Assistant
Computer Graphics And User Interfaces Lab At Columbia University
The Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab (CGUI) at Columbia University performs research addressing the "design and development of effective 2D and 3D user interfaces for a broad range of domains and devices".Within the lab, I was a member of both the integration and product management teams for the Art and Storytelling initiative, led by Amir Baradaran and overseen by the lab's director, Prof. Steve Feiner. I specifically focused on a project titled "IAmAI", which seeks to facilitate a lifelike interaction between an avatar in augmented reality and a human user and using NLP, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning technologies.Contributions: Product Management: - Worked closely with project manager and teammates to create and update product requirements document- Created both high-level and technical sketches illustrating front-end and back-end architectures, data flow, and abstract application structure- Oversaw weekly deployment meetings and helped assign tasks to sub-teams accordinglyIntegration:- Incorporated tools made by each sub-team into central Unity project by creating new C# scripts and adjusting existing ones- Debugged and deployed app to desktop (using Unity) and iOS (using Xcode)- Established guidelines for front-end and back-end teams to ensure successful integration of various tools Developed a strong familiarity with: - The Agile software development methodology and Scrum framework- Unity software and scripting in C#- Debugging and deployment in Xcode- Client-server communication (SocketIO, object serialization, data transfer with JSON)Also exposed to:- Server-side programming in Python and deployment on Google Cloud Compute Engine- Interaction with speech recognition and NLU APIs from IBM Watson, Microsoft Azure, and Apple- Creating and accessing MongoDB database