Kathy Hosseini
University of Maryland, University College
Field of Study: Computer and Information Science
I have a student position at National Library of Medicine and I am working with Dr. Hauser to improve the C++ coding on the MARS database in order to make it more useful. Although I have just started, I expect to learn a lot in this project which involves C++ Programming along with SQL. I am also working under the supervision of Mr. Glenn Ford to organize and categorize MARS journals and do some C++ programming in order to make the journals more readable. I hope to get a lot of experience working with the wonderful people in NLM.

Daniel Krainak
College: The Catholic University of America
Field of study: Biomedical Engineering
At CEB, I work under the direction of Rodney Long to develop a prototype image retrieval system for spine x-ray images. I program in the Matlab 6.0 environment, developing a graphical user interface for use the spine x-ray database. We are combining health survey data with image-based information to create a more in depth mechanism for searching through a large database of images. I have developed in many areas during my stay at CEB, including Matlab, image processing, query-by-example, database skills, and overall researching skills. Thanks for everyone who helped make this summer a wonderful experience especially Rodney Long, George Thoma, and the CEB as well as Dr. Lutz and the BESIP (Biomedical Engineering Summer Internship Program) affiliates.

Jonathan Schlaifer
Hi! I am a summer student intern, concluding my second year of work here at the CEB. I am a senior Computer Science concentrator at Harvard University. My goal this summer was to support the MARS project by trying to provide a way to improve the efficiency of correcting OCR affiliations. I did this through the CARTEL (Catalyzing Affiliation Repair Through Electonic Lookup), where I would use an OCRed author name to search into a database of past MARS data. My task was then to determine which of the affiliations returned were relevant. I did this with the AFFFRONT(Affiliation Fixer For Repairing Originally Not-Quite-Perfect Text) algorithm. My result was that I built a DLL to package this algorithm, and constructed a utility to update the database so that it can be kept current. It's been a challenge and great fun!

Karen Steely
I am a year-round student employee earning credit towards a degree in computer studies at University of Maryland University College. I work on a very visible project: the CEB Web site. I design and build pages that adhere to Federal regulations but I have plenty of room for creativity. The great thing about this job is that I can learn and practice everything from design to databases to programming languages. When I'm not working on the Web site, my projects include helping to build a video conferencing unit and using a digital camera to record CEB events.

Scott Straughan
Hello, I am a student employee at the National Library of Medicine working as a programmer. I am a senior at University of Maryland University College majoring in Computer and Information Science. This year I have been working on the MARS project with Dr. Susan Hauser to improve the lexicon system. This project allows me to practice using C++ to connect to a database. My latest project that I recently started work on is a browser for the WebMARS data. I have had a chance to gain knowledge working with C++ and SQL. I already have learned a lot working here and it will be great help when I graduate.

Smitha Viswanathan
I'm a student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, seeking a BS in Computer Science. My work includes estimating geometric statistics of titles, authors, abstracts, etc. of different journals, so that they can be uploaded onto the MEDLINE database.

Eugene Wu
Unlike my co-workers, I will be graduating from high school this coming year. I attend Walt Whitman High School, and I'm planning to pursue engineering or computer science in college. This summer, I'm working with Dr. Walker to expand the capabilities of the DocMorph server to include a newly developed image file type, DjVu. I am programming a windows DLL that will allow the DocMorph website to process DjVu files. As a follow-up, I'll also be conducting an evaluation to determine the relative effectiveness of DjVu compared to conventional methods. I'm getting a lot of experience and practice working with Visual C++, and I'm also learning a lot about DjVu.