Google Summer of Code with RedHen Labs

I spent my summer working at Google Summer of Code with RedHen labs. Working at RedHen labs was my first internship, and it was a lot more than I thought it would be — in the best way possible. Stephanie Wood, Director of Wired Humanities Projects and Senior Research Associate at the University of Oregon, and Jungseock Joo, Assistant Professor at Department of Communication, UCLA, were my mentors for this project. The main aim of this project was to develop a Visual Recognition model for Aztec Hieroglyphs and deploy it online. Hieroglyphs refer to a stylized picture of an object representing a word, syllable, or sound, as found in ancient Egyptian and specific other writing systems. Similarly, Aztec is a form of pictographic and ideographic photo-writing. It has no alphabets, but different symbolic signs that have different meanings.

This internship taught me a lot, like coding in open-source, implementing deep learning techniques on real-world datasets, maintaining massive datasets on high-performing servers, etc. Still, not only the technical stuff, but I've also learned how to write and maintain blogs, interact with people from different backgrounds, take up meetings, etc. This internship has helped me enhance my technical as well as social skills. As for expectations for the rest of my internship, I am thrilled to be learning more every day. I have been working with very talented people and this internship has given me more exposure to real-world experience. It has also helped me learn more about different fields and use my skills to help in various ways.