Research Life
| This summer, I decided to stay at school in peaceful Champaign Urbana and do research with the Photonic Systems Group at the Beckman Institute. |
 |
| In actuality, on a cool autumn day, the institute looks much more urban. |
 |
| It's located next to the Computer Systems Research Lab where www.farinaz.com spent her summer shining a laser at a mine with her wonderful professor, and becoming best buds with my own research group hanging out at Jillian's. |
 |
| When Andy bought a new magnetic toy to point his wireless web server at, everyone in the office was fascinated for hours. Ron (guy who knows everything about everything but refuses to admit it) and Evan are caught here watching Andy extol the virtues of his toy which apparently goes uninterrupted for over a month. |
 |
| The rest of the office mesmerized as the battery (and you thought it went for a week without one) propels the toy past it's design specs, crashing its apex into the desk. Included here are Steve and Dave. |
 |
| After his new haircut, Matt was just too cool to stare at the toy with everyone else, so he did so on his own time. |
 |
| Our group does some 3D visualization in Beckman's Cave -- right next door to one of our labs. Here Evan anxiously waits as Dan loads Quake. |
 |
| My project was to build an Infrared Rotational Sheer Interferometer. Here it is shown in the Michaelson configuration with the boring flat mirrors. |
 |
| This was the goal -- infrared fringes. Months spent poking around with everything I could think of until one morning when Ron came in, twisted some knobs, and had them in under five minutes. Damn. |
|
|
| One of the more interesting things I did this summer was take ECE 344 -- Fabrication Lab. I did it mostly for the lab experience and didn't enjoy the lecture or the dumb reports at all. At the last possible minute, I ended up dropping it rather than miss a week in New Orleans. |
|
|
