For my AHS Capstone I decided to contextualize how Dante's Divine Comedy, and in particular Dante's Inferno, influenced different parts of society: such as the Italian Language, the views on the Afterlife, and different forms of classical and modern media.

For my AHS Capstone, I wanted to create a new fantasy world and explore some family and societal dynamics. I wanted to do it through something other than exposition, so I created a character, Ishya, a 25-year-old traveller, to explore the setting.

This semester, I did an independent study with Professor Helen Donis-Keller in advanced photography techniques. I was able to complete four photo series through this study. I learned a wide range of new techniques and was able to work with new lenses.

The reflection game created by Regan Mah in the AHS Capstone class of Spring 2023. A set of prompts that allow players to reflect upon various life experiences.

Microbial communities are an important cornerstone of all ecosystems. By studying their interactions and the way they respond to environmental changes we can better understand which factors contribute to the ability of the community to function. Previous experiments were conducted to gather data on how microbial community composition changes over time of a nutrient perturbation. After collecting this data, the microbial community composition was determined by sequencing of the 16SsrDNA gene. Being able to analyze these datasets of community composition, is where we are able to gain the most understanding of the significance of the community. There are main ways to look at these communities but the main three are the statistical approach, network analysis, and linear systems modeling. Each of these provides a different lens to look at datasets which can be used to give context to the various trends in the data. Being able to understand how to use each of these methods and determine which is the most useful for any given dataset is an important part of this research.

Article 22 of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)'s Radio Regulations, Equivalent Power Flux Density (EPFD) is defined to ensure protection from harmful interference from non-geostationary (NGSO) systems into geostationary (GSO) satellites or earth stations. EPFD depends on the power flux density amplified or attenuated by the antenna gains of the NGSO and victim GSO systems. This occurs when an NGSO satellite transmits towards their system's ES, and some of the NGSO's transmitted power and causes interference to the GSO ES. EPFD calculations are performed in three directions: down, up, and intersatellite. The paper focuses on the EPFDdown algorithm and its applications in interference regulations and radio astronomy services (RAS), which tend to be more susceptible to unwanted emissions from other systems. In order to protect RAS, a new set of EPFD limits was established. To ensure that RAS is protected, the ITU Radiocommunication Sector restricts harmful interference. EPFDdown is defined as the EPFD from the NGSO satellite into the victim GSO earth station (ES), and accounts for the gain pattern of both NGSO satellite and the GSO victim ES in a particular orbital geometry and frequency band. In terms of RAS, RAS telescope sites on Earth are victim ES. To help prevent Article 22 limit exceedances, the ITU's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) defined Recommendation S.1503 to provide guidance for satellite operators developing software to evaluate EPFD limits. This study focuses on implementing the EPFD-down algorithm in ITU-R S.1503 to analyze EPFDdown. With the EPFD validation process, NGSO systems can ensure that incumbent and planned GSO networks can operate without harmful interference, reducing data loss caused by interference from NGSO satellites. By going through each step of the EPFD validation process to validate Mangata's EPFDdown showing, this paper aims to make the complex EPFDdown algorithm more accessible to companies who are operating satellite systems.

Clew Maps is an update to a preexisting iOS App for indoor navigation called Clew. Presently, blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals struggle to navigate unfamiliar spaces, and often have to rely on navigation instructions from a sighted guide. Clew Maps introduces a cloud database that can store pre-recorded routes that users can navigate along in an App Clip experience. This means that even non-Clew users can utilize the navigation tool without downloading the app, and that routes can be navigated by an individual without them having to walk along the route to record it ahead of time. Clew Maps robustly anchors the device utilizing ARKit’s ARImageAnchors; however, more work is required to better understand the potential use cases and address potential pain points for BVI individuals, such as route discovery and aligning to image anchors.

Research was done on actuators for a soft robotic glove that could assist children with cerebral palsy with at-home hand physical therapy. Materials in the construction of fabric-based soft pneumatic actuators were evaluated for this purpose. Three different bladder types (TPE impulse sealed bladders, condoms, and modeling balloons) were tested. The straightening and bending force each actuator could produce as well as the shape the actuator formed when unrestrained were analyzed. The results indicated that condoms and modeling balloons are superior to TPE bladders for the use as bending bladders. All bladder types performed well as straightening bladders so any could be chosen depending on the desired quantitative values such as the straightening force and force-to-pressure relationship. Further research is needed into the durability of each bladder type and into attachment methods of each bladder to prevent air leaking.

Clew Maps reimagines Clew as an app that crowdsources routes for indoor navigation and repurposes the existing backend code base to better serve this purpose by alleviating the pain points inherent to the current route-sharing mode of use. By implementing image anchoring to improve the robustness of the anchoring and alignment process, and by using a cloud database for route storage along with a new user interface (UI) to address the limitations of sharing routes in Clew, Clew Maps makes independent travel in unfamiliar public spaces more accessible for people with blindness and visual impairments (B/VI).

The RoboTuna is a robotic fish that will be able to collect samples from marine wildlife and allow us to better understand the oceanic ecosystem and the behavior of underwater creatures. This biomimetic robot will be able to get closer to fish and other creatures in their natural habitat than a person ordinarily could, and therefore will give new insights into how the underwater world is changing. Many of the RoboTuna’s pieces need to be flexible and waterproof, so casting and molding will be necessary to create them. The focus of this research was on fabricating a fin and air bladders for the RoboTuna, which included experimenting with different kinds of silicone rubber and urethane plastic. Existing soft robotic actuators have been extremely helpful to gain insight on how to move these parts without mechanical mechanisms. Shape memory alloys allow for simpler fin movement actuation instead of having to rely on a bulky motor. The same goes for moving the tail via air bladders, a kind of fluidic elastomer actuator. The differences between different kinds of silicones and how each material and molding method affected the fabricated parts are shown through flexibility and strength data. The information here can help future researchers determine what materials would be best for various parts of the RoboTuna and understand their options for soft robotic actuators.

There are long-standing examples of how engineers’ education in probability and statistics has not been sufficient. This work presents a novel theoretical framework to help teach and study statistical variability. Using this framework, we developed an interview guide and deductive coding scheme to use in interviews with engineering students. Early results from these interviews support our initial hypothesis of a slight induced variability bias.

The emerging field of Public Interest Technology contains the seeds for an engineering practice that embodies the ethic of care and undergraduate engineering educational experiences in the mold of liberatory education. We realized these opportunities by creating an undergraduate, student-led public interest technology clinic. Using autoethnography, we reflect on our effort to create the clinic and find that we prioritized emotions and relationships, embraced slowness and deliberation, and claimed student ownership. These practices served to redefine engineering in ways that center care and equity, helping us create the inclusive and effective engineering and public interest technology educational experiences we wanted for ourselves.

Computing has a history of perpetuating injustices, a pattern that has only seemed to grow worse over recent years. These injustices are a direct result of computing's epistemic values and practices, which suggests the need for computing to adopt alternative epistemic values and practices, including sociopolitical awareness, reflexivity, humility, and an explicit commitment to justice. These are the central values of feminism, but while scholars have developed theories about how feminist values could reshape computing, there is a need for more research into how to practically integrate feminist values into computing practice. Additionally, given that computing education reinforces and reproduces the dominant computing culture, there is a need for further research to imagine how computing education could be transformed to teach developing technologists how to integrate feminist values into this practice. I conducted a small-sample, in-depth interview-based study to understand the experiences of people who are developing into or practicing as feminist technologists. Through my research, I identified six common characteristics of feminist technologists, including a commitment to care, awareness of power structures, practice of epistemic humility, application of systems thinking, and negotiation with the tensions in integrating feminist values. I also identified two common types of experiences that help develop people into feminist technologists: experiences that foster feminist consciousness-raising and experiences that positively model feminist values. These insights suggest alternative ways of understanding the development of feminist technologists as a continuous process, where being and becoming a feminist technologist is one and the same, that requires a foundation of emotional safety.

here are so many things in our daily lives that we see from the same perspective. We are used to looking at the world from human height, at human scale, and on human timescales. This is no coincidence, as most things we interact with are designed for exactly this experience. However, if we take a step back and think about how limited this view is we can start to recognize things that happen around us constantly yet are completely beyond our normal perspective. In his exhibit we present a few examples of what we can learn with a shift in perspective and how the things we take for granted in everyday life can be seen if we take the time to look. We encourage you to touch, play with, and learn from these exhibits and to ask yourself questions as you go. See if you can think about a memory you have about a space and imagine it from a different perspective. Is there a time when you saw something that was right before you the whole time? What other things do we take for granted when we experience the world?

I researched the etymology of the word engineer and the social implications of that. I wrote three insights from this, and made a visual timeline/collage that provides the context.

Exploring what it takes to write, record, produce, mix and master a full song for the first time.

Streaming link: https://soundcloud.com/rgao99/right-now

AHS Capstone Project.

Medium: Hand drawn comic with ink and paper A comic based off of a small success when dealing with intrusive thoughts fueled by anxiety and depression.

For my AHS Capstone project I made video diaries reflecting on my life as a half-Japanese and half-American person. This video (with parts in both English and Japanese) is a compilation of those diaries, and there is an accompanying transcript.

An exploration and study of Sashiko Stitching, a type of reinforcement embroidery from Japan.

Arwen Sadler's AHS capstone project. An exploration of writer's block through multi-media, consisting of post-its and other partially finished writing projects.