Twitter Famous!

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First of all, I have to thank Chartwells, the company in charge of FAU's dining services, for letting me conduct my research in their cafeteria (and for putting up with the bumps and potholes between the initial deployment and the final pilot). My dissertation focuses on reducing food waste, specifically among students in cafeterias. Essentially, I used sensors to create a network that automatically weighs food waste and reports the data to our student body. It was an interesting experience to say the least, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it—ok, well maybe not the moments when I had to stick my head inside the trash can to debug things... Hopefully, the results from the research will be published soon (the paper is in submission)! I'll be sure to link it once I can.

During the experiment I had the display linked to my Research page, but now that the experiment is over, I'm working to create a method to look at the data retroactively. I'll get that up once I finish writing my dissertation (boy, it feels good to say that!).

In the mean time, I just wanted to save and relish the fact that, for a small moment in time, I was #TwitterFamous. April 28th was #StopFoodWaste day and Chartwells participated in several activities leading up to that date to encourage students to reduce their food waste. They let me set up a table one day and my project made it on to their twitter feed!




I should clarify that I didn't actually design the batteries; I think they meant hardware. I designed the architecture of the project, which included choosing which sensors to use, the printed circuit board (PCB) for the sensors, the design of the scale itself (two sheets of plexiglass, with the electronics neatly tucked between). The enclosure for the electronics was designed by one of the undergraduates in our lab and tweaked by our Electrical Engineer.




@StopFoodWasteUS, the primary host of the nationwide Stop Food Waste day, even tweeted back. These are the things that make all of the hard work worth it!


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