Students Convey the Value of Applied Research to their Education
Mark Beauchamp and Connor Pick are 3rd year Mobile Computing Degree students in the School of Applied Computing. They’ve both been working on the Cloud DX applied research project; Mark since January 2018 and Connor since June 2019.
As recently reported, Mark was asked by the Cloud DX team to accompany them to the Yukon Medical Association’s recent Virtual Care Summit and help demonstrate their HoloLens device. You can read more about that HERE.
We followed up with Mark afterward…
Question: What was your role at the conference?
Mark: “To show people the HoloLens app, to help guide them through it, and make sure all the technology worked. It was more like a demonstration, not a presentation.”
As he explained, “We began research in 2017 with Cloud DX which was when we created the software that runs on the HoloLens. The doctor puts the device on and sees a hologram of the patient with panels around it displaying vital signs and other health information. Cloud DX created the hardware and we created the “Doctor app” software for it”.
Question: What was it like to see what an actual tech company does in the field [travelling with Cloud DX to a conference]?
Mark: “This wasn’t my first event with this project, but its good experience to see what the working world is like. It’s really cool because you get asked a lot of questions [about the medical side of the hardware itself and what it can do] and at first, I didn’t know the answers to a lot of these questions”.
During the act of finding them, Mark said he learned more and more about the product as a whole, its potential applications, and its value to the medical community.
Connor Pick, another 3rd year Mobile Computing student who works on the Cloud DX project with Mark, describes the value he finds in working on an applied research project through Sheridan’s Center for Mobile Innovation Lab (CMI)…
“You learn a lot just researching anything related to the medical field; also the various technologies that you work with”.
Mark also finds value in working in applied research. “Because in school, they can only teach you so much, but when you’re actually working on a project, you run into unexpected things and you have to find a way to try to solve these problems, so it gives you a really good opportunity to do that”.
Connor: “Its neat because you get opportunities to work with technologies you’d wouldn’t have access to if you didn’t work in the CMI. The HoloLens is one example of that. And if we need resources, the CMI helps us get those resources.”
Mark: “Yeah…It’s a great opportunity and allows you to complement a lot of skills you’re learning in class. And going to conferences helps you to see what’s out there. You talk to people that are actually in the industry.”
Question: And what about your instructors [the project’s Principle Investigators]? What role do they play for you?
Mark: “We work directly with the industry partner, meeting with them every couple of weeks. Cloud DX always comes to Sheridan and we just have an hour meeting with them in the CMI.
The PIs are more here just to guide us… they point us in certain directions, encouraging us to check out certain things. And they get us resources too and help us out as we try to implement different technologies to a problem. They also make sure you don’t get stuck, but a lot of the work is up to the student to figure out and what to look into and then see what works and what doesn’t.”
Connor finds that the best part of research… learning about the best technologies out there, seeing what’s currently being used and trying them out.
A recent article on Sheridan’s Curiosities Blog, highlights the project that Mark and Connor are working on as well as other innovative research that Sheridan as a whole is currently involved in.
Learn more about the Centre for Mobile Innovation Lab and its past and present research.
