I'm halfway through my first week of work, and so far so good! I'm struggling a little with my project, but I know its in the research stage so I'm trying not to stress too much. My first day the post-doc I am working for showed me a bunch of projects that the group has done/is working on and its
exactly what I want to do!
I got to read through some things and decide what I want to work on. I am really interested in particle/physical based modeling (like modeling water or smoke with a bunch of particles and determining their movement with physics), but I know that I'm definitely not as experienced as a lot of people here and so wouldn't be able to produce results anywhere near the things she was showing me. So I decided to work on an integration of two things because it will let me see some physical modeling code and it will produce cool results if I can get it to work.
Basically I'm going to try to integrate existing open source eye tracker technology with existing deformable object code. Deformable objects are basically not rigid objects (like real world objects that change in collision--for example, a can will dent if it gets hit, or jello will jiggle when disturbed). Eye tracker technology would allow the user to move the simulated object around on the screen using only their eyes. Right now I'm researching different open source eye trackers. This is proving to be extremely difficult since eye tracker research is extremely new and most eye trackers are either expensive or require special equipment like infrared sensors and headgear. I'm going to try to either use a standard webcam or most likely a Kinect (XBox) since the Kinect has IR sensors and a webcam. I can get the Kinect to work on my computer so now I'm trying to figure out how to somehow integrate an open source eyetracker (which mostly are made for windows) with the Kinect. I have no idea how feasible this is, and right now it looks pretty difficult, but its been done before so hopefully I will make some progress on this.
Overall, its really nice here. I get my own office because there's a lot of empty space since a group of doctoral candidates just graduated. I have a huge window with a decent view and every day we all go to lunch together. I usually get in between 9 and 10 and stay until around 6 or 7. Most people get in around 10, and she said its flexible, but I figure this way I can get up at 7 and run in the morning and take my time getting ready and eating breakfast. I don't even mind coming home so late because it's literally a 5 minute walk.
If I didn't already have a job, I would totally apply to graduate school here. They need more PhD candidates so they have projects that people then apply to. They pay PhD candidates like 60,000 CHF a year and I think Masters candidates somewhere int he 50,000-60,000 CHF range. Its definitely expensive to live in Zurich, but getting your Masters/PhD is seen more as a job here. And there is a very good opportunity to work at Disney during/after your stay here (which comes with cool perks like a "business trip" to Disney Paris).
The education system here is very different though. Most people get their Bachelors after 2-3 years and start their Masters directly after that for another 2 years. Then they start their PhD which usually takes 3-4 years. They didn't really understand when I said I just finished my Undergraduate/Bachelors and it took me 4 years. I think Undergraduate for them is Bachelors+Masters.
Well, that's my first week of work so far! Hopefully I make some progress...
