从研究科学家到应用程序开发人员

Ever since forging an original research project her freshman year, 荣誉项目 Gabrielle Bailargeon成员 仍在继续 在成功的浪潮中冲浪.

Baillargeon’s intrepid research goals and skills led to her being selected for a 本科生研究经历(REU) 并且得到了 竞争奖学金 北美海洋水族学会, 这一切都发生在她进入大三之前.

“我觉得自己很幸运，”拜拉根说. “The REU doesn’t usually get given to sophomores and neither does the MASNA scholarship. I also got involved in research starting my freshmen year, 这在RWU并不罕见, 但我所做的研究类型是.”

目前还没有这样的指南, Baillargeon is developing a mathematical model for a smartphone app that predicts the sustainability of marine ornamental fish species in the marine aquarium trade. Her model will generate sustainability rankings of fish so that consumers can make better informed decisions, with the goal of improving sustainability within the trade. This model development led Baillargeon to the REU this past summer.

在REU, she studied the functional response of rock crabs and how they impacted fishery management policy. 而在这里, she learned valuable skills to help further the development of her own research, 比如与活体动物一起工作的挑战. This experience also opened her to exploring fishery research­, math modeling and field research.

“The most valuable skill I can take back with me is the way of thinking and approaching questions,巴亚尔让说. “Just looking more towards the future and seeing how every little thing I do in a project affects the larger picture.”

进一步推进她的研究, Baillargeon attended the annual MACNA conference in Las Vegas last month, 作为本科生奖学金获得者. She connected with people in the sustainability and marine aquarium trade industry, 她的项目和应用会直接影响到的人. Talking with them motivated her to develop her model to be as accurate as possible, which led her into deeper work on the design portion of the project, 她说.

尽管这是一个独立的研究项目, there have been key faculty members that have helped Baillargeon with the research and app development along the way. She’s had guidance from Associate Professor of 海洋生物学 Andrew Rhyne, who is one of the leading scientists in quantifying and mapping the marine aquarium trade. Rhyne helps Baillargeon select certain factors to use as well as ensuring the model is generating the right outputs. And when parts of the mathematical model required knowledge of coding, she turned to Assistant Professor of Mathematics Robert Jacobson, 谁是该领域的专家.

“With this project I came into it only having the idea of the end goal: creating an app that would be a consumer guide for aquarium trade fishes, 但我没有去那里的路线图,巴亚尔让说. “I certainly feel like I’ve gotten true research experience that a ‘real scientist’ would because I’ve had to overcome many problems in order to get to my end goal.”

Baillargeon will continue her scientific journey by presenting her research at the 2018年全国大学生荣誉委员会 11月初会议.