Breakfast began with all of us gathered in one hotel room and pooling food: we had bagels, cream cheese, Pringles, frozen strawberries (one of the teachers set the fridge to freezer mode by accident), bread and canned tuna.
The texture of the frozen strawberries was like ice-cream but if only they were sweeter...
Project display set-up continued at LA Convention Center, and I finally passed all the safety checks. If you enter the exhibit and immediately look to your right, you can see one row of the Computer Science posters:
Her project was about investigating polyhedra that tessellate space and folding them using origami. Here's a closer shot of the huge assortment of models on her table:
You can also see photocopies of her abstract on the table. Every finalist had stacks of them on the table for interested visitors to take.
After visiting around, I attended a symposium titled "Talking Science", where a public speaking professional taught us good presentation skills. It was mainly about deciding on a few core messages you want to bring across and using every opportunity to guide the interviewer so you end up talking about those core messages. He got a couple of volunteers from the audience to get interviewed in the "before" state. At the end of the symposium, he interviewed them again to see their improved performance in the "after" state. I wish I got picked as a volunteer...
On the streets of LA again, I spotted a structure that my algorithm could fold:
There was a buffet dinner before the Opening Ceremony, and I saw Ramona Flowers:
The masters of ceremony throughout ISEF were big shots, which shows how high-budget the whole event was. The host of the Opening Ceremony was Chad Zdenek, "host of the G4 network's It's Effin' Science".
There was a cool performance by a drum group (?):
Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, gave a keynote speech. The most memorable part of it wasn't the speech itself, but a (roughly) 5-minute exclusive preview of the yet-to-be-released Kung Fu Panda 2.
Most of the food we ended up having
My half-eaten bagel
The texture of the frozen strawberries was like ice-cream but if only they were sweeter...
Project display set-up continued at LA Convention Center, and I finally passed all the safety checks. If you enter the exhibit and immediately look to your right, you can see one row of the Computer Science posters:
My poster is at CS009 near the middle of the picture. Two people are reading it now.
My final set-up
My project is about folding axial symmetric polyhedra, which are some kinds of 3D solids that have rotational symmetry. Last July at the Fifth International Conference on Origami in Science, Mathematics and Education, I attended Jun Mitani's lecture on folding these kinds of solids, and his models followed the target solids well except for some external protrusions. I thought of a way to hide those protrusions inside the solid instead by stacking up simpler solids that I had already derived algorithms for in previous projects. I also wrote a computer program that allows user to specify their target solid and generate its crease pattern.
Check out Jun Mitani's Flickr photostream with all his beautiful models and even a link to the program he wrote!
Of course, I was eager to check out the only other origami project in the hall, so i visited 木村さん's booth:
Her project was about investigating polyhedra that tessellate space and folding them using origami. Here's a closer shot of the huge assortment of models on her table:
Folded polyhedra from her project that tessellate space
More polyhedra, as well as other models by other researchers in the top right corner. Starting from the orange crane, we have Koryo Miura's map fold hidden behind a large orange origami cylinder (whose design was it?) and Kaori Kuribayashi's (she was at 5OSME) origami stents.
You can also see photocopies of her abstract on the table. Every finalist had stacks of them on the table for interested visitors to take.
After visiting around, I attended a symposium titled "Talking Science", where a public speaking professional taught us good presentation skills. It was mainly about deciding on a few core messages you want to bring across and using every opportunity to guide the interviewer so you end up talking about those core messages. He got a couple of volunteers from the audience to get interviewed in the "before" state. At the end of the symposium, he interviewed them again to see their improved performance in the "after" state. I wish I got picked as a volunteer...
"Before"
Video critique of the "Before" interview
After the symposium, I visited the E-lounge, which was a huge room with a "theater corner":
Loungers watching TRON: Legacy
The rest of the room contained a large number of laptops which had internet access. The E-lounge is a place designated for finalists or official parties to use the Internet, and it's open most of the time.
On the streets of LA again, I spotted a structure that my algorithm could fold:
There was a buffet dinner before the Opening Ceremony, and I saw Ramona Flowers:
All the finalists and everyone with anything to do with ISEF were seated in this gigantic hall for the Opening Ceremony:
The masters of ceremony throughout ISEF were big shots, which shows how high-budget the whole event was. The host of the Opening Ceremony was Chad Zdenek, "host of the G4 network's It's Effin' Science".
There was a cool performance by a drum group (?):
Seriously, the opening ceremony was like a concert. We watched a video of some well-funded experiment about water jet-packs. Too bad my camera ran out of battery right when we got to the actual testing, and too bad the video seems to large for Blogger to handle -_-
Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, gave a keynote speech. The most memorable part of it wasn't the speech itself, but a (roughly) 5-minute exclusive preview of the yet-to-be-released Kung Fu Panda 2.
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