This is the last week of my ten-week research journey!

It is nearly the end of my summer research, and I recently had a meeting with Dr. Maxwell on 8/10/2023.

This week has been a busy and productive period in my research endeavors. A significant milestone involved transitioning from the conventional ImageFolder class to the specialized CatDogLogImageSubDataset class. This transition required a thoughtful implementation of the torchvision Dataset class, enabling the seamless loading of exr format images from a designated directory while maintaining compatibility with other PyTorch components. However, this transition was not without its challenges, as a substantial portion of the existing codebase was built around the assumption of PIL image loading. Introducing the CatDogLogImageSubDataset, which utilizes OpenCV for image loading due to PIL’s limitations with exr format images, led to a series of complex issues that required careful resolution.

This week has been quite challenging in my computer vision research. I made some modifications to my current model, incorporating an additional convolutional layer and flattening the tensor after the convolutional layers. Additionally, I increased the batch size and epoch size in an attempt to enhance the model’s performance. However, my code had numerous errors that required an entire week of debugging. Thankfully, my mentor, Dr. Furst, and my advisor, Dr. Maxwell, provided valuable assistance during this process. We thoroughly analyzed various sections of the code, particularly focusing on data normalization and the convolutional neural network’s numerical aspects. Dr. Maxwell suggested that there might still be some residual code from the original fully connected network, which needed modification to resolve all errors. If my alternative approach doesn’t yield the desired results, I may have to revisit this aspect.

I am currently working on enhancing the CatOrDog project by incorporating images in linear RGB and log RGB color spaces into the training process. However, I have encountered a significant issue that stems from the utilization of jpeg files in the original project, which have undergone compression and conversion to sRGB. Despite this challenge, obtaining raw data files online has proven difficult, and the sample size of the collected raw images is insufficient for meaningful learning. As a solution, I have chosen to perform fine-tuning on the existing jpeg data.

This is the 5th week of my journey, and it’s hard to believe that I am already halfway through the program! Despite feeling a bit unproductive this week, I made some progress in my research.

This week (meet on 7/6/2023), I focused on expanding my skills in computer vision and deep learning techniques. I started by learning how to utilize PyTorch to train a convolutional neural network (CNN) for image classification. Dr. Maxwell shared a helpful website that guided me through the process.

I had my weekly meeting with Dr. Maxwell today (June 29th). This week, I attended the DREAM meetup with guest speakers who already gained his Ph.D. and talked about his journey, which provided me with valuable insights into computer science Ph.D. programs. I had the opportunity to chat with current Ph.D. students in the field at UW and gain insights from their experiences as well. Dr. Maxwell also shared his passion for research and discussed potential career paths after completing a Ph.D. It was enlightening to hear different perspectives and understand that research entails both challenges and triumphs, along with a sense of joy, passion, and faith.

I had a Zoom meeting with Dr. Maxwell on 6/23/2023 for our first weekly check-in. During our conversation, we discussed the conference he attended in Vancouver, which explored the exciting possibilities of combining AI and robotics. I provided an update on my progress for the week.

I had a kick-off meeting with Dr. Bruce Maxwell on June 14th, and it was a productive start to the project. Interestingly, he graduated from Swarthmore College, which is not far from my alma mater, Franklin and Marshall College (F&M). We connected on this shared geographical background, as he mentioned his experience swimming at F&M, which made me feel a sense of familiarity.