Scientist Profile #5: Avani Gadani, April 15.

Name: Avani Gadani

Hometown: Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, right next to Amish country.

Hobbies: Telescope making, kayaking, video games, and cooking  

What do you study? I study how the light that comes into our eyes turns into pictures, and ultimately ideas in our brains.  Neurons, the cells in your brain, react to a pictures of the natural world by releasing bursts of electricity that other neurons can detect.  I use the math of shapes to figure out what neurons are likely to be talking to what other neurons so we can understand what we see.

Why is it important? Once we know how we see, we can do a better job of building robots!  We already have some pretty cool sensors that take in light and turn it into 3-D maps, like Google Streetview and 3D scanners.  Imagine if you could make a robot that could look at something and know exactly what it was without being told.  We can also help blind people see if we know what pictures look like when they are represented by neuron signals.

What do you like about being a scientist? I love that I get to choose what I want to work on every single day, and people actually pay me for it.  I get to think of questions, write some code, and see the answers right away.  Being a computer scientist also means that I can work wherever and whenever I want, including on the beach and in my bed.