Born: 1972 (circa), United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Born in Puerto Rico, she started to lose her sight as a teenager. Because she couldn’t see well, she wasn’t understanding anything in the classroom. “The transmission of information just was not accessible – I couldn’t see what the lecturers were writing on the board and I didn’t have access to the books”. As her vision worsened, she was forced to make a decision: quit, or keep going. She chose to persevere, she repeated classes until she got her degree. It took her six years.
While doing her bachelor’s degree a friend played her live audio from a solar flare. A huge ejection of energy from the sun that reaches detectors on the ground. It was inspiring. I could hear the sun in real-time, and when the sunburst finished, I could hear the galactic background.
During her internship at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center she and her mentor created prototype technology to analyze data that had been converted to sound.
She later created ‘sonification’ software that allowed her to participate fully in astrophysical endeavors. To test it she asked experienced scientists to simulate a task used to identify black holes near galaxies. The data was presented as sound only, visual only, and sound and visual mixed together. The experiments revealed that sonification of the data improved astronomers’ ability to detect the subtle signals indicating the presence of a black hole. “I felt really disappointed at that moment, because people like me had been completely left out of the field for no reason”.
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