My REU Experience

I am a junior in the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley. I am majoring in computer science and engineering. This past summer, I completed an Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) internship with Dr. Brendan Morris, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Real-Time Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. I designed, implemented, and evaluated a low-power, lightweight facility access monitoring system utilizing modern facial recognition technology.

I first met Dr. Morris while attending high school in Las Vegas and working on a computer science STEM endorsement for my diploma. He understood my interests and training and consequently offered to mentor my research.

I found the internship to be both challenging and rewarding. Because my project involved development of a complete software and hardware system, I was able to apply many of the principles I had learned in both computer science and electrical engineering classes. I also became familiar with Facenet and Open Face deep learning facial recognition technologies and computational devices such as the Raspberry Pi and the Movidius Neural Compute Stick. During my internship, I participated in weekly research team meetings, where I learned about a wide range of other computer vision projects being conducted by undergraduate and graduate students in Dr. Morris’s laboratory.

I was able to live at home while completing the internship, which also allowed me to accomplish two personal goals that were important to me: (1) I competed in the Nevada State Amateur Golf Championships; and (2) I obtained my Nevada driver’s license!

AccessComputing and this internship have helped me in many other ways and I am returning to my coursework at UC Berkeley with new found energy and confidence.