Meeting #1 with Dr. Giovannini

Today, we had the privilege of joining a Zoom call with our mentor, Dr. Giovannini of UCLA, and his graduate student, Phillip Richards.  We went over our tentative question, plan, and timeline using the rough visual aid linked below.  There were many uncertainties going into the call as related to our project, but the conversation with our mentors alleviated many of them; they had answers to nearly every question we posed, and we are incredibly grateful that they have agreed to help us in this process.  For example, we currently have interest in the software ImageJ, which they had worked with in the past and were able to share essential insight on. They also provided us with excellent journal articles and resources to further our understanding of our topic.  The main critique they provided was to solidify our hypothesis and justification; in other words, we need more research to back up why we were predicting what we were.  All in all, the call went extremely well, and we're very excited to have the opportunity to work under such wonderful guidance. 

Our conference was taken during class from the back room of the lab, as shown above.