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Every computer science student at Hiram College is required to perform two research projects, called IRCs, prior to graduation.  Of the two projects I completed I am proudest of my Computer Vision project because it not only was one of the coolest things I’ve ever studied, but it also required an extensive amount of hard work to complete.  The satisfaction is still a source of motivation for me to this day.

The project’s in-depth details can be found at http://www.geigel.com/signlanguage/, however, briefly, I was able to employ computational methods, initially researched in the 1980s, to recognize American Sign Language letters within computer images.  (Note: The initial research performed in the 1980s focused on recognizing faces in images which have popularly become known as Eigenfaces).  The process is called Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and is widely considered to be a breakthrough discovery in the advancement of Computer Vision.  Much of PCA’s attractiveness comes from it’s ability to train similar, yet slightly different, images of a given class.  In my research, for instance, the classes I dealt with were signed letters corresponding to different hand orientations.  When it boils down to it, PCA is able to mathematically define (using Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues) the most important features of a given class (for example a fist for letter A versus the open cirlce for the letter O), and then when a new unknown image is presented to the system a calculation can be performed and a mathematically reinforced estimate can be made as to what class the unknown image belongs.

Ellen Walker, my Computer Vision professor at Hiram College, oversaw my research and offered help when I ran into issues.  Ultimately, I was able to develop/program/execute a fully functional PCA system in C++ for recognizing American Sign Language letters.  In fact, once the PCA system was trained, I was able to test it on 10 sample images with 100% recognition accuracy.  The project was a huge success!  Both in it’s results and in the lessons, knowledge, and gratification it left me.  Though Ellen has never explicitly said this to me, I think that she was also impressed and surprised with how well the results turned out.

This all took place in 2005 — the year I graduated from Hiram.  As the years went on I would occasionally correspond with Ellen and then on 11/29/2006 I received an email from her asking if my project could serve as a possible AI/Vision project that she would be submit to the University of Hartford’s “Machine Learning Experiences in AI” shared curriculum.  Of course I was excited and happy that my project would be the inspiration for such a project. 

A few years later I received another email from Ellen on 2/23/2009 saying that project was now appearing on Hartford’s website at http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/compsci/ccli/samplep.htm.  The project’s detail page can be found at this URL: http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/compsci/ccli/rasl.htm.  There’s also a PDF (http://cs.hiram.edu/~walkerel/RASLUPCA.pdf) that has in-depth details along with a credit at the very bottom stating that the project was inspired by my project!  In classic programmer speak — w00t!

After I graduated from Aurora High School I was accepted to Hiram College, a private liberal-arts school in Northeast Ohio. I brought to college a more sophisticated work ethic than I had in high school, and an open mind. My first course, The Quest for Justice, was taught by one of my favorite professors, Ken Alpern. I’ll never forget my first class with him. Imagine 20 or so students loudly piling into a classroom. Ken just sat there, like a stone, stoic in his stature. Settling whispers and coughs crescendoed to a roaring silence. Still, he sat there gazing upon each of us. Clutching our copies of Plato’s Republic we sat there not knowing what to expect, and in a state of paralytic fear. Then he spoke, quietly and somber, yet somehow loud and thunderous, “Open your books. We will read the first sentence together. This will be the first sentence you will read as college students, and it will be from a text that has had profound impact on humankind. Remember this moment.” As he began to read aloud we read along in silence. It was Socrates talking, “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, the son of Ariston.” In that day, my first day of classes, Ken set the tone for the way I approached higher education. He also, perhaps unwittingly, peaked an ongoing interest in philosophy. Over the course of 4 years at Hiram I had 3 courses with Ken all of which were top-notch. When one speaks of memorable teachers he surely has a place among my top 5.

Unlike many other students I knew coming into college exactly what I wanted to major in, computer science. Hiram’s CS department is extremely focused, challenging and educationally demanding. We are the only college in America to have an all female faculty, and also one of only a few that require 2 research projects before graduation instead of just 1 which others schools normally ask of their students. There will always be a place in my heart for the 2 senior faculty members, Obie Slotterbeck and Ellen Walker. Their lifetime experience alone is a wealth of knowledge, and their enthusiasm for the subject matter second to none.

My proudest moment as a professional student was my research project done in Ellen Walker’s Computer Vision course. I developed a fully supervised and trained vision detection system for classifying sign language letters within photographs. I approached the project with the same energy and determination I had in my chemistry project. I dominated the research and understood every technical detail required to make my system work. The satisfaction I had from the project was some of the purest ever felt. When I gave my presentation to my fellow students and professors a great exhilaration came over me. You know what’s a great feeling? Working your ass off for something that you know you’ll get an A in, and having 100% confidence going into a presentation that you won’t get anything but an A.

Like most people who look back on their college years I remember mine as being some of the best of my life. Unlike most people, however, I don’t want to look back on them as if I can’t have even better times ahead of me! I am not done with life! I still have things to offer this world and things to do. After graduating it was a very strange feeling to not be returning to school the next fall. I miss learning. I miss research. I miss that undescribable spark a person feels when they’re on a campus with other smart people who are equally active in educational endeavors. The atmosphere is viral and electric. Hiram College, if nothing else, injected into my soul a desire to learn even more than I know today. To defend freedom of thought. Lastly, by generating a pang (sometimes painful) that I should strive for even more learning.

In the words of Hiram’s motto — fiat lux — let there be light.