{"494811":{"#nid":"494811","#data":{"type":"news","title":"How mentoring and a high school internship prepared Kathrine Udell to jump right into research","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBy Laura Mast\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen Kathrine Udell stepped on campus as a civil engineering major at Georgia Tech a few months ago, it was already familiar ground.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUdell spent much of her senior year at Kennesaw Mountain High School working on a research project with School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student Atiyya Shaw. In fact, she\u2019d been so active in the work that she already has two published academic papers to her name.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENot exactly the typical starting resume for an undergraduate student.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201c[Shaw] helped me in almost every way,\u201d Udell said. \u201cShe taught me how to analyze data and how to code, how to write the paper. I was always one step ahead of the game, because she would always set the deadline ahead of my class deadlines, so I would finish it before the rest of the class.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cShe did it herself,\u201d Shaw said. \u201cI tried as much as possible to let her have ownership of what she was doing, with enough oversight, but I think that was really cool for her.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUdell joined Shaw in Associate Professor Michael Hunter\u2019s research lab as part of her required senior-year internship. Her project expanded on work Shaw completed in 2014 using a driving simulator to study how drivers perceive roadway environment complexity. Udell redesigned the original experiment and geared it toward her high school peers, bringing an entirely new group of participants to research that has originally focused on Georgia Tech students.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThat turned out to be extremely valuable, since most of those people were overwhelmingly new or nearly new drivers. And it led to some results Shaw and Udell didn\u2019t expect: younger drivers perceive roadway environments as LESS complex than more-experienced drivers. At least, initially.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe recorded months following licensure,\u201d Shaw said. \u201cAs they gained more experience, the perceived complexity of the roadway environment started to match the [older] drivers at Georgia Tech.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe easy answer for the results was that young drivers are simply overconfident. Shaw and Udell didn\u2019t discredit that idea, but they also attributed the finding to inexperience.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cOne of the biggest things that we noticed was that young drivers have to focus on the road so they don\u2019t veer off the road,\u201d Udell said. \u201cOlder drivers use their peripheral vision to stay on the road.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cYounger drivers have decidedly very different visual search patterns because they have to fixate more on the center of their lane in order to stay in their lane,\u201d Shaw explained. \u201cAs a result of these fixations, they search the environment less.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUdell has completed her first semester of research as an undergraduate at Tech, and now she\u2019s become the mentor, helping a current high school senior through his research internship with Shaw.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cEveryone is so helpful here, and so friendly, and it was so nice to be exposed to that before coming here,\u201d Udell said. \u201cIt helped me to know that if I come here, people are going to be helpful, and they want you to succeed.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe experience proved so valuable Shaw and Udell also are trying to spread the word. They\u2019ve submitted a paper on their research collaboration to help other scholars design engineering research experiences for high school students.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor Shaw, the whole process of serving as a mentor has been a natural extension of her own experiences.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs a Georgia Tech undergraduate, she worked in Hunter\u2019s lab, eventually staying on to complete a master\u2019s degree and now to pursue her PhD. Shaw said Hunter\u2019s enthusiasm drives her to explore her own big ideas, and to tap into that feeling in her high school interns.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cHigh school students have a natural curiosity and desire to grow and learn that makes working with them an absolute joy,\u201d Shaw said. \u201cI love when they become excited and committed to the research question that we are exploring, and obtaining this personal \u0027buy-in\u0027 is the most valuable asset a research project can have.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Udell had two published papers and a PhD student as a mentor before she even stepped foot on campus."}],"uid":"27446","created_gmt":"2016-02-03 11:12:28","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:20:35","author":"Joshua Stewart","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2016-02-03T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2016-02-03T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"494781":{"id":"494781","type":"image","title":"Kathrine Udell in a transportation research lab","body":null,"created":"1454522400","gmt_created":"2016-02-03 18:00:00","changed":"1475895253","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:13","alt":"Kathrine Udell in a transportation research lab","file":{"fid":"204550","name":"kathrineudellinlab_atiyya_shaw_h.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/kathrineudellinlab_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/kathrineudellinlab_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":182691,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/kathrineudellinlab_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg?itok=r4By9rc-"}},"494791":{"id":"494791","type":"image","title":"Kathrine Udell setting up experiment","body":null,"created":"1454522400","gmt_created":"2016-02-03 18:00:00","changed":"1475895253","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:13","alt":"Kathrine Udell setting up experiment","file":{"fid":"204551","name":"kathrineudellatkennesawmtnhs_atiyya_shaw_h.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/kathrineudellatkennesawmtnhs_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/kathrineudellatkennesawmtnhs_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":185759,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/kathrineudellatkennesawmtnhs_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg?itok=gF7eAnyC"}},"494801":{"id":"494801","type":"image","title":"Atiyya Shaw with mentee Kathrine Udell","body":null,"created":"1454522400","gmt_created":"2016-02-03 18:00:00","changed":"1475895253","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:13","alt":"Atiyya Shaw with mentee Kathrine Udell","file":{"fid":"204552","name":"atiyyashaw-kathrineudell_atiyya_shaw_h.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/atiyyashaw-kathrineudell_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/atiyyashaw-kathrineudell_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":155951,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/atiyyashaw-kathrineudell_atiyya_shaw_h_0.jpg?itok=RzqSV-sX"}}},"media_ids":["494781","494791","494801"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/ce.gatech.edu\/people\/Faculty\/811\/overview","title":"Michael Hunter\u0027s Profile"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.cobbk12.org\/kennesawmountain\/","title":"Kennesaw Mountain High School"}],"groups":[{"id":"1253","name":"School of Civil and Envrionmental Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"},{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"}],"keywords":[{"id":"169874","name":"Atiyya Shaw"},{"id":"327","name":"high school"},{"id":"169875","name":"Kathrine Udell"},{"id":"169876","name":"Kennesaw Mountain High School"},{"id":"4372","name":"mentoring"},{"id":"50741","name":"michael hunter"},{"id":"171628","name":"roadway complexity"},{"id":"8288","name":"Transportation Research"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:joshua.stewart@ce.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJoshua Stewart\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWriter\/Editor\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESchool of Civil and Environmental Engineering\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStory by: Laura Mast\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["joshua.stewart@ce.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}