Shaking Things Up
SCEC internships enrich the
undergraduate experience
By Karen Newell Young
It isn’t every day that interns show veteran researchers a new way of
seeing things. But that’s exactly what undergraduates in the Southern
California Earthquake Center (SCEC) internship program have done for
the past two years.
This summer, interns at SCEC—a national research center composed of 14
core institutions, based in USC College—developed a method of capturing
earthquake images on a computer screen that can be downloaded by a T.V.
station to illustrate what happens when a temblor strikes. Traveling
along the fault, above and below ground, the digitized movie shows
viewers the earthquake potential under such features as land,
buildings, bridges and nearby towns. By developing their own computer
code with free, widely available software, the students were able to
produce the “live” images in less than an hour—a big advantage for the
media and others whose need for immediacy during a potential disaster
is critical.
SCEC Director Thomas Jordan says he has never seen anything like it. “A
lot of people said it was impossible, and to my knowledge, it’s the
first time an earthquake has been captured by a computer in this way,”
he says. “It illustrates the kind of sophisticated information
technology projects the interns attack each summer.”
The intern program is funded as part of a $10 million, five-year grant
from the National Science Foundation for earthquake information
technology (EIT) research. In its second year, the EIT intern program
has guided some 20 undergraduates through complicated projects
involving information technology and earthquake science. Each term,
interns and graduate mentors interact with researchers at the top of
their field, including SCEC scientists from USC, Harvard University,
Caltech, the U.S. Geological Survey and other prestigious institutions
around the country.
“One of the most exciting aspects of the program is that these interns
are at the center of earthquake research and working on extremely
sophisticated problems with the best in the field,” says Jordan. “This
is really something special. They are learning how to use advanced
technology in a way they would never learn in a typical classroom.”
“Sometimes I get a little envious,” says Sue Perry, director of the EIT
intern program. “It would really have been fabulous to have experienced
this as an undergraduate.”
Along with workshops, symposia, field trips, mentoring and advanced
training, and research in earthquake sciences and information
technology, the students gain invaluable experience in teamwork and
collaboration. Many of them have had no experience or education in
earthquakes but are attracted to the computer science aspect of the
program. Others have had no experience in computer science or
earthquake science, but seek the synergy of earth science and
information technology.
Brandee Pierce, for example, is a fifth-year pre-law student majoring
in philosophy. She was attracted to the program’s emphasis on visually
capturing a natural phenomenon. “The program is a challenging,
technologically and academically aggressive session that engages
students to not only go beyond themselves, but also beyond the current
technology and science out there today,” she says. “I had to stretch a
bit intellectually to think even further outside the box to creatively
solve visualization issues.”
Jed Link, a 2002 summer intern, was a USC communications major who is
now a graduate student in rhetoric at California State University,
Northridge. He returned to work for SCEC this past summer.
Neither Link nor Pierce had any experience in computer science or earth science before their SCEC internships.
Jeremy Zechar was a senior in computer science when he became an
intern. By his own admission, he couldn’t tell a fault from an
earthquake, but now he is a graduate student in geophysics, working
with Jordan.
Each summer, the interns are challenged to accomplish a large-scale
innovative research project in 10 weeks. They then present their work
at the SCEC annual meeting, which serves as a culmination of the summer
program. Throughout the school year, the program continues with
part-time internships and somewhat less-ambitious challenges geared
toward school-year schedules.
This past summer, the challenge was to create computer-scripted movies
of “L.A. 3-D,” the visualizations produced by the interns to show
Southern California’s faults, earthquakes and surface features in 3-D,
in order to gain a better understanding of the spatial and temporal
relationships among them.
Last summer, the students prototyped computer code that creates 3-D
visualization of multiple, large data sets that represent seismic
activity. They projected their images of faults and earthquakes onto a
special 3-D system called Geowall, which uses two polarized images that
create the illusion of three dimensions when a viewer wears special
glasses. Unlike other 3-D projection systems, Geowall is portable and
priced reasonably enough to be used on a broad scale.
“Earth science is becoming a more advanced science in terms of using
high technology,” says Jordan. “The experiences these interns get will
equip them for a wide range of opportunities in fields other than
earthquake science. The increasing intersection of information
technology and the natural sciences will demand the kind of skills
these students are gaining.”
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