{"id":219186,"date":"2024-10-08T07:15:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T11:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=219186"},"modified":"2024-09-24T15:56:55","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T19:56:55","slug":"month-of-discovery-sophia-hatzis-27-a-researcher-and-mentor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/10\/month-of-discovery-sophia-hatzis-27-a-researcher-and-mentor\/","title":{"rendered":"Month of Discovery: Sophia Hatzis ’27, a Researcher and Mentor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sophia Hatzis ’27 was a newly arrived first-year student when she learned about Innovate Labs<\/a> at separate campus-wide kick-off events. What she heard intrigued her, so she decided to check it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was so cool how Innovate tries to get students to explore things outside of class,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought I could do some cool projects within the lab.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year later, Hatzis has more than met that goal and is now part of the Innovate Labs team, showing a new wave of incoming students around. As a lab research specialist, she helps students discover the possibilities available through Innovate, an educational research lab within the UConn School of Business<\/a>. The lab provides students of all disciplines with opportunities and resources to learn, explore, and develop industry-valued skills in emerging technology and analytics.<\/p>\n

A Trumbull resident majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Sociology, Hatzis says she is especially excited to be participating in Month of Discovery<\/a> (MoD) activities this year, something she missed last year because she had yet to be hired.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I\u2019ll get to see the other side of things,\u201d she says. \u201cMoD is the whole month of October, and it\u2019s filled with innovation events. Last year, I checked out all the different makerspaces and it inspired me to start working on some of my own projects. This year, Innovate will be running Makerspace Bounce on October 3. I\u2019m looking forward to helping out with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sophia
Outside the lab, Hatzis is an avid hiker. (Courtesy of the Office of Undergraduate Research)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After graduating, Hatzis plans to pursue human factors engineering, which considers both the user side and consumer side of emerging technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the idea that I can do work that considers the social side and impact of the new things we innovate,\u201d she says. \u201cFor example making sure an AI program that does redistricting doesn\u2019t perpetuate gerrymandering, or if you design a traffic control system, the town has the resources to feasibly power it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hatzis\u2019 work with AI has not gone unnoticed. In April, she was one of handful of tech-savvy students tapped to make presentations at Hartford\u2019s AI Day, an event showcasing sophisticated local AI-based companies and providing networking opportunities for those companies and promising students.<\/p>\n

Hatzis and her partner taught attending business professionals how to use machine learning to create a chatbot. Together, they showed participants how to capture images of themselves smiling, frowning and wearing a shocked expression, then taught them how to train the computer model to recognize facial expressions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese students are so knowledgeable, bright, thoughtful and inquisitive,\u201d Jonathan Moore, executive director of the CT Information Technology Institute and leader of the Innovate Labs initiative, said at the time. \u201cThey really are going to shape the future of technology and business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeping up with the pace of worldwide innovation is one of her favorite parts of working at Innovate Lab, Hatzis says. \u201cWe are constantly adapting to the needs of the campus and the new technologies that come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the summer, Hatzis helped with the Young Scholars Senior Summit<\/a> program at which students, through the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship Program, were introduced to the different kinds of technology in the lab and then directed to use it for a project with real world impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoyed discussing the feasibility of their technology and how they could incorporate it into their ideas,\u201d she says of the experience. \u201cWe honestly have something for everyone no matter what they are interested in. Once you get a student started with one thing, I like seeing them get comfortable with the technologies and branching out to try new things outside their comfort zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside the lab, Hatzis is serving as treasurer this fall of a gender-inclusive service fraternity (APO<\/a>) and dances with the university ballet company. She is also a morale captain for UConn\u2019s HuskyTHON<\/a>, an annual dance marathon and fundraiser for Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, and enjoys hiking and exploring. At UConn, she loves to watch sunsets from Horsebarn Hill.<\/p>\n