Yale-NUS students engage in innovative summer research at Yale University
Students spent two months researching in areas such as computer vision and economics
Yale-NUS College students enjoy a wealth of opportunities to pursue research during their semester break. Through the Yale College Dean’s Research Fellowship, Yale-NUS can engage in in-depth, original research in science, technology and engineering, supervised by a Yale University faculty mentor. This semester break, Stefan-Christian Roata and Nicole Juan-Ning Hu (both from the Class of 2023) were among those who spent two months at Yale University in New Haven, United States, conducting research with Yale faculty mentors.
Stefan-Cristian Roata (Class of 2023) applied to the fellowship hoping to further his academic interest in Computer Vision. Image provided by Stefan-Cristian Roata.
Stefan is a Mathematical, Computational and Statistical Sciences (MCS) major in the Data Science track. At his summer research fellowship at Yale, he focused on developing an experimental ‘personal drone assistant’ attached to an Android smartphone, capable of following its user around without being remotely guided, and interacting with its user via hand gestures, facial expressions and human emotions.
Stefan’s main task in the research was to craft an algorithm that could enable the drone to make a map of its surroundings and, at the same time, localise itself within that map. This feature would later allow the drone to avoid obstacles in its path, especially while following the user around the house or outdoors.
“I cannot describe my experience as anything else but fantastic,” said Stefan. Stefan’s most memorable moment was when he implemented an algorithm he worked on, the ORB-SLAM3 algorithm, on the drone and watched it run in real time using images from the phone’s camera. “It was a marvellous sight, and it certainly was the culmination of my research efforts during the summer,” he added.
The ORB-SLAM3 algorithm running in real-time with images from the drone-attached Android phone’s camera. Image provided by Stefan-Cristian Roata.
Beyond technical skills, Stefan was incredibly thankful to have “a dedicated and supportive research group” that helped him both within and outside of the laboratory. “The support that I needed when I got stuck was often just one question away, and the PhD and postdoctoral students of my laboratory quickly became my close friends during my time in the United States,” said Stefan. His new community quickly helped him adjust to life in New Haven, from local advice about the best eateries to advice on graduate school applications.
Similar to Stefan, Nicole Juan-Ning Hu (Class of 2023) pursued the fellowship to further her academic passions. As a MCS major and Economics minor, she spent her time in college exploring economic development and social welfare and became deeply curious about development economics and public economics. At Yale, Nicole conducted economic research on the welfare of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh under the guidance of Yale Professor of Economics Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, and worked on other research projects at Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE), where Prof Mobarak is the faculty director.
Nicole (second from right) with her Y-RISE colleagues in New Haven. Image provided by Nicole Juan-Ning Hu.
This experience was especially meaningful as Nicole’s interest in development economics stemmed from Prof Mobarak’s lecture at Yale-NUS College in 2018, and she is grateful for the opportunity to work with Prof Mobarak again.
A goal for Nicole this semester break was to further explore and confirm her decision to pursue graduate studies. “Being in a bigger research group and proximity to Yale’s cohort of pre-doctoral fellows gave me a chance to speak with people at various stages of the academic pathway,” said Nicole. “I had great conversations with my colleagues about the economic research process, critically evaluating paradigms and positionalities as economists, the current research frontiers, and their personal, varied paths towards becoming an economist.
Reflecting on her time at Yale, Nicole felt that the community at Y-RISE was extremely humble and hardworking in achieving their goals, further motivating her in pursuing economic research. This experience “initiated the beginning of a shift away from simply learning economics to thinking about what it’s like to do economics.”
