Week 1: Getting Started Again

 Hello! 

    I hope everyone had a great summer! In the summer, I went to a Boygenius concert, traveled to Seattle, WA, and did research for WAESO. I also took Calculus 3 with Professor Marfai online. It was very eventful and busy, but I'm glad I could rest for a couple weeks before the semester started! I'm very excited to jump back into both classes and TRAIN. I've decided to continue the bacteria identification research. However, instead of moving to Microsoft Azure, Joshua and I decided to jump into coding our identification code! It'll be challenging and take quite a bit of research. However, this would be a better route as we provided a proof of concept using Google's Teachable Machine. I am confident we can create an algorithm that mimics and improves the previous model.

    This week, I went straight into growing bacteria again! Last semester, I only had 4-7 viable photos of each bacteria type. I aim to have at least 20 viable images this semester, so I plan to photograph 20 colonies for each bacteria type. The types will be the same as last semester. I tried a new technique for applying the bacteria on the petri dishes because I saw it in a documentary about E. Coli. It's silly, but it didn't go all too bad. I averaged 4-6 colonies in each plate, creating good space between them. The only thing is that 3 of the 14 Petri dishes did not grow. I may have been too lighthanded in my approach, so I will take that into consideration for later. I'm super excited to see what the semester holds for all of us, and I hope everyone is doing well!

-Maya