WSU Applied Sciences Laboratory - Technical Assistant

For the summer of 2021 (starting in May), I got an internship at WSU's ASL as a technical assistant for working on a research project. This project's objective was to offer a program to optimize the wavefront of a laser onto opaque material. The goal being to have the light that reflects from the uneven opaque material to be adjusted so that instead of a random pattern, it is intensified onto a camera for in-depth readings that could help derive the composition of the object. The program being implementing offering a selection of different algorithms to use and ability to dynamically configure cameras and spatial light modulators (SLMs) in the lab.

To do this, my work started with a given project code base. My tasks were in implementing and debugging multiple algorithm approaches, an iterative and two genetic algorithms. To improve performance, I had to develop support for multi-threading and significantly refactor the code to accommodate the changes needed and provide more flexibility in future developments that may be required.

As well as incorporating multi-threading, my work also included updating and expanding upon the graphical user interface that uses Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC). The result is introducing new control settings, support for saving/loading configurations, and more responsive interface with abort and warning options. I also greatly improved the documentation, producing a more cohesive documentation file to aid in future developments. I continued my support for the project through my Fall semester until January of 2022.