SRCD = something really cool, duh =P

How often does an undergraduate get to attend an academic conference? How often is the student just a sophomore? How often does that sophomore get to present at the conference?!

I don't know about overall statistics, but at the end of March I headed up to Boston with several other Caplabbers for the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, a huge 4-day psychology conference. The trip started around 5:30 AM Thursday morning, when Laurie picked up Maya, Brian, Drew, and myself for the drive up to Boston. We paused to pick up coffee and some snacks, then continued on to catch Derek's talk abou the overimitation project at a Harvard-organized mini-conference they called "NSRCD" for "Nearly SRCD." His presentation was definitely the most polished of the group, and who could resist Felix (on the screen)?

Derek talking about Project Felix

After NSRCD finished, a bunch of us went to grab lunch and I got to meet some of the Caplab alums. Adena's now a first year grad student at Harvard, Mariko's at Johns Hopkins, Neha's a lab manager at the University of Maryland but she's coming back to Yale next year as a grad student, and so on. They were happy to see us too and hear all the lab news, like the babies Jaws and (Admiral) Hargreaves =P Then it was on to SRCD!

I spent Thursday afternoon tending various paper symposia: 3-4 people give 20-minute presentations with time for questions, then a "discussant" usually comes up to summarize everything and bring up a few more interesting questions. Laurie gave two talks on false beliefs in rhesus macaques and how they reason about essences without language (e.g. what makes an apple an apple?), both of which I've partially seen before but were still cool. I also got to hear Deena (another grad student in Professor Keil's lab) give a presentation on how preschool children reason about fictional worlds, e.g. does Batman think Cinderella is real?

The rest of SRCD passed in a similar fashion, attending symposia and viewing others' posters with various social events in the evenings. Finally, it was Sunday morning...after going to see Venkat (former Caplab manager, now a first-year grad student) talk about the Endowment Effect project, it was time for my poster session!

At first, it felt a bit intimidating to stand there with graduate students and professors browsing through the rows, reading abstracts and asking questions, but I soon developed a 2-minute walkthrough presentation, going through the basic ideas of each experiment and explaining the results. One of the coolest parts was starting to put faces to the names I had read so much about, like Josep Call (a co-author of Primate Cognition) and Malinda Carpenter. It was also nice to meet so many people from around the world: Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia to name a few.

My poster on the board...it's six feet long!

If any of you are really, really interested in seeing the poster, here's the PDF file (requires Adobe Reader):
Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus apella) use an Experimenter's Unfulfilled Intention to Locate Hidden Food

After that, the conference ended and it was time to drive back down to New Haven...I left physically and mentally tired from doing and learning so much over the past few days, but it was a really great opportunity to present my work for peer critique, getting a firsthand glimpse of another aspect of academic life. Many, many thanks to Laurie, Derek, and the Perspectives on Science program for helping me get involved in research so early and giving me plenty of guidance along the way =D

Caplab 101

Since I've had to explain my research in Caplab multiple times to friends and family, I figured I should write a post about it (plus it's super-cool anyway).

To start, Professor Santos is an incredible mentor as well as an excellent teacher - Animal Cognition class last semester was really interesting and "Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature" this spring is awesome. It's such a popular class we that we've had to move twice (Davies -> SSS 114 -> Law School auditorium) to accomodate all the people who want to take it! She insists that all of us call her Laurie, which took a little getting used to at first, but now it's cool. As a PI (principal investigator) she doesn't get to spend much time with the capuchins running trials but she stays up to date on all the projects going on at the same time through weekly meetings.

Second cool thing: the monkeys! On campus we work with a group of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) who all live together in a social colony. They get all sorts of toys to play with and lots of food - standard monkey chow plus fresh fruits and vegetables every day, even exotic stuff like pomegranate and coconut. They also get treats for finishing experiments, and each one seems to have a personal favorite: May Day really likes sunflower seeds, Felix really likes peanuts, etc. A few photos - I would post some of my own (like ones with the two babies!) except they're not officially approved...

Felix, the alpha male of the colony

May Day begging for food from Jill, her mother

Besides the capuchins, Caplabbers also get to work at a couple field sites: Myakka City, Florida has a lemur preserve, and Cayo Santiago is an island with about 1000 free-ranging rhesus macaques. People will go down for spring break, summer research, even a few for Thanksgiving break. A few more photos:

A family of macaques on Cayo Santiago

A red-ruffed lemur at Myakka

Third cool thing: the overall atmosphere of the lab is really chill. Lab meetings usually have one project presenting their work so far and getting comments from the rest of the groups. It's always helpful to hear other people's suggestions, especially when you've been thinking about one problem for too long and need a fresh perspective. We also have a system where doing chores to help keep the lab space clean earns "brownie points" with prizes at the end of every semester. That's how I ended up getting this little guy (the stuffed monkey, not the Santa hat) - he was promptly dubbed Nick-Nack because that monkey always seems to have his tongue sticking out...

Personally, I have found getting involved in research to be really easy. Since I was part of Perspectives in Science, I had guaranteed funding for last summer. I had already heard good things about Caplab from my freshman counselor Amy (Laurie was her senior thesis advisor), so it was just a matter of asking Laurie to sign the Perspectives form and off I went! In general it's pretty easy to get involved - some people take research for credit during the school year or just email professors whose work they find interesting and ask if they can volunteer.

Doing research in the summer was cool because a lot of my other PoS friends were around and we could concentrate on our work instead of having to juggle research with classes (which is a bit trickier but totally doable, based on my experience this past semester). We also got to plan a lot of fun events, like a picnic at the top of East Rock park, fireworks at Long Wharf for Independence Day, World Cup-watching parties, movie nights (Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest!), and of course a huge crepe/dessert night at my apartment.

Picnic at the top of East Rock!

For my independent project, Laurie helped me devise a procedure based on something she had published with grad student Jon Flombaum and additional lemur work (Note: link goes to a PDF file so you need Adobe Reader) to study what the capuchins understand about what someone else can visually perceive based on gaze cues. Working out the kinks and getting the monkeys to come in for trials took longer than expected, but we've recently finished acquiring all the data and this semester I'll be learning how to analyze that data as well as how to prepare a paper for submission to journals. I feel that I learned a lot from being involved in all aspects of the experiment from conception to completion, so in some ways I already have an idea of what graduate school would be like =D

Welcome 2007!

Happy New Year, everyone! Resolutions: Um...get more sleep? I'd also like to get more exercise, though that shouldn't be a problem since Phoenix will be having more rehearsals to prepare for the spring show, plus I'll still be running up and down science hill hehe.

In other news, there's a new baby in Caplab! Thank goodness I ended up not writing about the capuchin colony hierarchy in my YSM article, otherwise I'd have to change it yet again =P

Chrissy's heading back to school tomorrow (poor kid) and some college ppl have already left, but I'm still around for another two weeks...I predict lots of library and B&N time. I'll hopefully get to see some more people before they go back to school since I probably won't be back in Mtown until summer and even then probably for only a few days...ah, the busy life of a college student.

Random thoughts of reading week

Found this cool article about the reopened Kahn wing of the Yale Art Gallery:

Restoring Kahn's Gallery, and Reclaiming a Corner of Architectural History, at Yale

I haven't gotten a chance to see the new building yet - last Wednesday was the student preview but I had my Genetics exam Thursday, and Sunday was also rather hectic. Hopefully I'll be able to go sometime next week, maybe in the evening after my orgo final.

Final Caplab meeting was tonight...I kind of freaked out over dinner about last-minute revisions to my paper, but I think it turned out ok. We just went around the table giving final status checks on our projects, talked a bit about future projects, then gave out all these fun "brownie point" prizes - I ended up getting a cute little stuffed monkey, which was promptly dubbed Nick Nack for the tongue sticking out =P

Ok, let's see if this video embedding from YouTube works...

A video montage of clips from last Sunday's YAGS practice, set to "Appalachian Snowfall" by the Tran-Siberian Orchestra

Tonight's schedule: IM volleyball, a friend's holiday party in Trumbull, and possibly the Silliman Karaoke Night at Yorkside...I feel like I deserve a small break before getting back to work on my history paper...

One more month to go

It was a good week at home for Thanskgiving, a much-needed break before the end-of-semester push. Our academic calendar rocks - whole week off for Thanksgiving, hence the age-old H-Y game chant "School on Monday!" I got to visit my high school, chat with a lot of former teachers and old family friends...I also somewhat caught up on sleep, though I didn't get nearly as much work done as I should have =P At least the weather's been pretty nice - even now highs get into the low 60s, which must be really confusing for the plants. I even saw one tree starting to bloom in the courtyard this afternoon (photo to left).

Still, the holiday decorations are starting to go up, like this (not blooming) Christmas tree in the courtyard and lots of festive evergreens/icicle lights festooning the common room. Koffee Too? went all out and semi-painted their windows into a holiday scene. I hope it actually does snow before we leave for winter break - it would be rather strange to have this weather for much longer.

I had a semi-philosophical discussion with some friends today about the upcoming stress of finals and such - all of us had ambitious plans about catching up on work over break but none of us seem to have accomplished that goal. In the end, though, what needs to get done is finished one way or another, and you look back and realize that one paper or one not-so-good exam grade isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It like Timon says in The Lion King: You gotta put your past behind you. The only thing that really helps is take a deep breath and keep working toward what you have to do next.

The next two weeks are going to be pretty crazy. I need to decide if I'm writing a 15-page research paper or taking a final exam for "Molecules, Life, and Disease in the 20th Century" class, analyze data and write up the results for my Caplab project, prepare a poster with Sydney for the Perspectives on Science symposium, hopefully finish YSM production, clear out a bunch of Phoenix paperwork for UOFC funding and props/costumes purchases...next week isn't going to be fun just because of the Genetics exam Thursday and the last organic chemistry in-class exam Friday. Grr.

It's not all just work though. Winter IMs started tonight - my goal is to make it to at least half of the women's volleyball games and go cheer at more than half of the ice hockey games. The hockey games start super-late at night and the rink is halfway up Science Hill, but getting there and back is half the fun as long as you're walking with friends. Silliman is doing its share of holiday stuff too - we're having our traditional holiday dinner at the School of Management since we don't have our own dining hall, plus some other yummy things like "Fireside Fridays" with s'mores and kareoke night study break at Yorkside Pizza =D

For now, though, it's back to coding capuchin behavior patterns and then maybe some genetics reading...