Jennifer Nguyen

Jenn, raised in Virginia, moved to Vietnam following high school where she taught English. After a year and a half, she moved to Morgantown to pursue her degree at WVU. As an undergraduate she worked with WVU Sensory Neuroscience Research Center to create immersive, 3D visualization software to enable deeper examination of neurons. She received her B.S. degree in Computer Science and minor in Mathematics in May 2017. Jenn discovered her passion for robotics when working on her senior project and working with the WVU IRL team. This led her to pursue her master's degree in Mechanical Engineering with an interest in machine vision, machine learning, and decision making for autonomous learning systems. She has also worked with WVRTC on pattern recognition and 3D pose estimation methods using visual markers.

Jenn is passionate about robotics because it provides her the opportunity to contribute and be part of a community that works together toward a common goal for humanity. She also loves the ocean, is fascinated by coral reefs, and is passionate about ocean conservation efforts. The ocean absorbs ~90% of the excess heat from increased greenhouse gases produced by humans. Because of this climate change, we have lost 50% of corals in the past 30 years. Coral reefs are a crucial ecosystem to Earth and essential to humankind. A major motive for planetary exploration is because we are running out of resources. She believes in the importance of researching long-term solutions (space exploration and STEM outreach) as well as short-term (taking better care of our planet) for future generations. In her spare time, she enjoys swimming, traveling, hiking, backpacking, and video games.

Research Interests

• Machine Vision
• Machine Learning
• Planetary Exploration