Blog Posts

Travels and Fun Facts!

Lab Meeting - November 20th, 2025

November has been a month full of travel! I am very grateful and happy to have gone on these trips, which gave me a change of scene and the opportunity to explore new places.

Sudbury Field Course (November 1st - 8th)

At the beginning of this month I attended the sudbury field school, taught by Oz, where we learned about the impact crater in the region and how its effects are still seen today. After a few days of lectures, we split off into smaller groups and mapped the shatter cones in the area. We were given a general area on a map, and drove along the highways/roads, stopping at outcrops along the way and recording observations about the rock and whether any shatter cones were seen. My group was lucky enough to come across so many shatter cones the first day (see some images below)!

Although it was a bit rainy, the temperatures were never too cold and it was quite nice to be outside in the fresh air all day. Besides the school aspect, the course was also a great way to make friends and get closer with some of the other geology graduate students. Our evenings were spent playing games, talking and having lots of laughs. Oz even provided us all with shatter cone beer (pictured below with the two shatter cone samples I took home that are currently sitting in the dinning room of my student house).

The scientific fun fact I learned about the Sudbury impact crater is that almost all the shatter cones found were south of the crater, since the rocks there are softer and would have formed shatter cones easier. The non scientific fun fact I already knew but was reinforced on this trip was that little animals use the outcrops as homes so check to make sure you aren't taking a salamanders home before removing a sample (said salamander below, his house was promptly rebuilt by us after this photo)

San Francisco (November 13th - 24th)

After Sudbury I had a very quick turn around to do laundry and repack for my travels to San Francisco, where my boyfriend currently lives and works. I have been working from his house during the day, and exploring the city on the weekends and evenings. The weather is a lovely 12-16 degrees so it's a nice break from all the snow we got before we left. I have had some incredible food, powered up some rediculously steep hills, and gotten a lot of work done thanks to the 40" monitor that my boyfriend has that makes me feel like im on Mars when working with jmars (yipee for productivity)!

I've included some photos i've taken so far while here (for those that don't know I really enjoy photography and have maybe too many cameras). For this trip I packed my only digital camera - a fujifilm X-E2 with a prime 35mm lens. While in a second hand camera shop I picked up a new polarized filter to try since my camera is old and doesn't do well in low contrast situations (i.e. cloudy days in SF)

The scientific fun fact I learned is that the area where the Golden Gate bridge is, used to be a vast plain that stretched 27 miles past the current California coastline. This area was where the rivers from the Sierra exited into the sea before flooding occured. Another fun fact I learned was about how native lupine plants thrive here because the serpentine soils, which exists due to the techtonic boundary the city sits on.

Paper Summary

Lab Meeting - February 25th, 2026

The article that I will be summarizing is titled "SAR image edge detection: review and benchmark experiments" by M.J. Meester and A.S. Baslamisli, found at https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2022.2131480.

This article presents a comprehensive overview of SAR image edge detection. The authors begin with describing issues with edge detection such as speckle noise. Edge detection, which is one of the oldest operations in image processing, can help determine boundaries of objects in the images. Having accurate edge detection is important as it is a building block for more complex image processing algorithms. Existing basic edge detection algorithms use first and second derivative methods, however there are more complex algorithms that are built for SAR images such as Touzi, gradient by ratio, Gaussian-Gamma-Shaped bi-windows and more. To test all these algorithms, the authors created an experimental setup based on existing sets that use ground-truthing data as a threshold. They applied de-noising techniques, indentified key features then used the aforementioned threshold to recognize "true edges". After applying this method on a number of edge detection techniques, they found that the method with the best accuraccy for SAR specific data was GSS-bi-window, although a few others had good results as well. The authors then applied multiple edge detection algorithms to real SAR data, and used psuedogenerated ground-truthing as a comparison, with varying performance in algorithms. The authors conclude with a discussion of the possibilities of future edge detection algorithms such as those with deep-learning.

Overall If found the review quite interesting and well done for the most part. However, early on in the paper they mention that a lack of a quantitative benchmark but I think it could've benifited from a better explanation on what they were looking for. I also found the paper was quite dense in some parts due to its high technical nature, however this is not unexpected due to the in-depth nature of the review. However it is important noting I read this paper quite late at night and both these complaints can be attributed to my tiredness (whoops).

My Future Goals and Steps to Reach it

Lab Meeting - February 25th, 2026

This weeks assignment was to write about what I want to do in my future and the steps I'm taking to get there. To be completely transparent, I have no idea what I want to do! I usually like to leave all options open for my future and "go with the flow" when new opportunity or interests appear. For example if you asked me in first or second year engineering if I'd do a masters degree in a completely different field I knew nothing about I would say "no way!", yet five years later, I'm doing exactly that.

My two major options are industry, specifically looking at testing, satellite operations etc. Since I have work experience as a test engineer for a major satellite computer manufacturer, I am confident in my ability to go into this field. To keep this option open, I'm attempting to keep up my engineering skills through coding for researching, and projects on the side that I would like to work on (time permitting ).

The other option, of course is continuing in academia. Since it is early in my masters still I am not sure if this is the path for me. I hope that as my masters continues I will develop a better understanding of myself and my goals for the future. Programs that I think would be interesting are instrumentation and development, for example the phD in Astrophysics and Planetary Science degree at CU Boulder (however thats very competitive:(( ) . I will have to do more research in potential programs and people to reach out to over the next year or so to figure out what would be a good fit for me.