Companies around the world are investing in cybersecurity but are not confident in their security controls as the technology landscape is ever changing. Spyral, our risk scoring framework, aims to provide operational cyber awareness for companies by providing them the fastest actionable insight into their risk posture. National Vulnerability Database(NVD) provides a vulnerability score for different software flaws. Spyral extracts this vulnerability score from NVD and superimposes it with other operating environment factors such as number of machines in environment, cloud infrastructure, and affiliation with external entities to come up with a risk score contextual to the company. Spyral is also industry agnostic and does not take special regulations into consideration to provide an unbiased scoring based on only the operating conditions. This information is going to be presented in an information visualization dashboard which will provide quick insights into their risk posture.

Spyro: Empowering Familial Genetic Research Through Data Visualizations The field of precision medicine is projected for rapid growth in the next decade and genome analysis is at the forefront of this trend. However, current genome analysis tools have various issues: they have high learning curves, they are visually unappealing, and they have no easy way to compare multiple individuals’ genome data. In response to these issues, we have partnered with Spiral Genetics, a Seattle-based bioinformatics startup, to develop Spyro, a user-focused genome visualization tool. By leveraging Spiral Genetics’ next generation sequencing data, our tool allows researchers to utilize a comprehensive set of features in a simple, intuitive interface. Researchers can analyze an individual’s genetic variants, as well as make comparisons between multiple individuals. Because Spyro is focused on representing variant detection, researchers in this field can quickly adopt our tool and start analyzing.

The Baylor University Libraries need to provide relevant, meaningful library instruction sessions for 90 course sections of ENGL 1304: Thinking, Writing, & Research, a first year English course required by most of Baylor’s undergraduate programs, without overloading any single librarian and creating continuity between instructing librarians. In this project, I explore the content/practices currently used in ENGL 1304 library instruction sessions and the needs/expectations of their graduate level student instructors, who teach 60% of the sections. The gathered information is used to create a set of new standardized learning outcomes that form the foundation of an instruction request form.

Classification, whether it be for groceries, books, music or the countless other commodities that require effective browsing and retrieval, bring with them the challenge of organizing materials in a coherent manner. Console and computer games are no different in that respect, but provide an additional challenge. As an interactive medium, games are largely defined by the choices and actions that players are allowed to make. The Steam Achievement Classification Analysis Project is a quantitative exploratory analysis that utilizes the rewards given to players in the form of “achievements”, and by way of text-mining and clustering games based on those achievements, provides insight into how thematically similar games differ in the tasks players are directed to accomplish. As the research shows, although existing tags and categories can reasonably define groups of interactive games, those groupings can often belie serious variations in the interactive dimension of those games.

During the Japanese occupation in the early 1900s, around 300 Koreans fled the homeland to Cuba to find a better life. Since 2015, University of Washington East Asia Library (EAL) has collected digital photographs of these Korean immigrants in Cuba. The library needed metadata for this collection and was hoping to develop a research guide on these immigrants. To meet these needs, I organized the collection and created metadata for each photograph. In addition, I researched resources on these immigrants and organized them by the media type. To maintain continuity for future projects, all the processes and rules were documented as well. This Capstone project shed light on the lives of the earlier generations of Korean immigrants in Cuba and their family gatherings. EAL webpage now provides online access to the digital photograph collection and a list of research resources regarding these immigrants.

With so many contradicting media articles citing research, knowing what to believe can be frustrating for everyday media consumers. Without diving into academic text themselves, it can be quite the challenge for consumers to know if the appropriate level of authority to attribute to the research cited (is the journal being cited well-respected? Are the findings controversial? Do similar studies exist with different results?). The particular factors which influence the amount of coverage academic research receives from journalists are not well understood, which further complicates the situation. We have gathered and analyzed descriptive data about media articles and the academic works they cite to help us understand what sort of research receives attention from journalists. Through this research we hope to give consumers a better understanding of the relationship between journalism and academic research, and thereby enable them to create more informed interpretations of information they encounter in media.

In July of 2011, Washington adopted the Common Core State Standards. Schools across the state have since been working to implement these new standards and establish a platform for learning and growth. Due to implementation still being in its earlier stages, there is a strong need for programs that will develop needed information literacy skills to satisfy these standards. The “4 Winners” are a part of an information literacy program that I designed to build critical research and evaluation skills in 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. In this digital age, students must conduct their own research in an effective and critical manner. Working with Montlake Elementary School, the “4 Winners” Information Literacy Program has been designed to be used by instructors/librarians and can be adapted to a variety of learning environments. This program develops invaluable researching skills that students will need in order to be successful throughout their lives.

Video games are widely consumed as interactive media by a diverse population. 49% of US adults reportedly play video games and the US industry alone is estimated to be worth over $23 billion. However, who gets represented in video games is poorly understood and public discussions on the topic are divisive and heavily anecdotal. Controversies like Gamergate demonstrate a lack of depth, rigor, and scope in discourse on diversity in gaming across stakeholders including academics, consumers, developers, and publishers. Our team identified and built solutions to address the two largest barriers to the study of representation in gaming: a standard way to describe video game protagonists and a representative sample of video games. Released in a public-friendly format in collaboration with key stakeholders (e.g., the GAMER group, Anita Sarkeesian), these materials enable the systematic study of representation we need to advance crucial dialogues about our fastest growing media.

My Capstone project is focused on the development of the instruction and illustration of two education programs for the Learning Theater; an extension of the Gottesman Library at the Teachers College of Columbia University. The Learning Theater is at the forefront of innovative technology, education, and immersive learning. I provided two multi-media rich programs for implementation at the theater, titled Genre Journey and History Walks. Genre Journey, a program geared toward middle school aged students distinguishes the differences between six literary genres while students explore creative and narrative writing, character context adaptation, and empathy. History Walks juxtaposes the textbook account of The Civil Rights history with the personal narratives of the same history; paralleled to emphasize and feature silenced and underrepresented voices from this historical era. These programs were created with evocative learning objectives in collaboration with the newest technologies in order to promote content for long-term understanding and life-long learning.