For my capstone, I created a mosaic of city hall and its surrounding buildings on the terrace. My mosaic was inspired by Isaiah Zagar’s Philadelphia Magic Gardens and other mosaics of his. I wanted to emulate his use of mirrors and found objects in my piece. My mosaic was also inspired by Faith Ringgold’s vibrant quilts of Brooklyn’s skyline. I wanted to use color in the same joyful way that she did in her artwork. I worked with Darby on my project, and she did the mural of the sky and buildings that surround my mosaic. I chose to do my project on the terrace because it is one of the main spaces where students eat lunch and hang out, and it can be very dismal, especially during the winter months. I collaborated with SLA staff, Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia Magic Gardens, and friends at school to source materials for this project. Throughout this project, I practiced communicating with people in a professional setting, time management, and my overall artistic skills. My hope with this project is that it will liven up the terrace and will be a source of inspiration for future students to also challenge themselves to take on a large scale art project. Due to weather conditions and various other factors, Darby and I were not able to start creating our mural/mosaic until the week of capstone presentations. The image below reflects the progress we have made so far. We intend to finish by the end of this week.

LINK TO MY GOOGLE SITE: https://sites.google.com/scienceleadership.org/lyev-pitram-capstone/

This capstone was a sports analytics project related to ultimate frisbee at the professional level. I learned about a sport completely new to me, collected and manipulated data from the UFA (Ultimate Frisbee Association) website, and used code in R Programming to answer an analytic question I formulated from watching the sport. The topic I chose to explore was relating the distance of a frisbee pass to the likeness of its completion. The introduction to my research is the following:

The sport of Ultimate Frisbee centers around passing a disc across a 100 yard field, trying to score while an incomplete pass almost guarantees a turnover. When practicing, strategizing, and making split second decisions, players have the choice between “hucking” the disc deep downfield or playing it safe and “dishing” or “swinging” it to a closer teammate. Naturally, a shorter pass is more likely to be completed, while a longer pass is riskier, and could lead to a significantly more beneficial outcome. But by how much? This project seeks to measure the true risk of throwing a longer pass, and the variances in the abilities of different teams and players in professional frisbee as it relates to passing distance. This project, focusing on the 2024 UFA season, hopes to not only discover the true relationship between pass distance and success rate, but also highlight teams and players that find more success in these areas than the league average.

My capstone project is a mix of my two passions. I sought to create something that I could hold physically, an object I could brainstorm, test, build, innovate, and refine until I was proud of what I had accomplished. To integrate my love of medicine, I decided to design a healthcare robot. Using an Alexa Echo Dot and face-tracking system, the goal was to develop a device that users could easily communicate with. This robot would not only assist in diagnosing symptoms but also offer various treatment options, ranging from over-the-counter remedies to prescription medications. Oftentimes, when people research their symptoms online, they get an automated response, which can lead to anxiety. For instance,e someone might look up information on a cough they might be experiencing and end up fearing they have a life-threatening condition. I want to take away this anxiety by creating a user-friendly device that provides comfort and clarity. I aimed to develop a tool that helps individuals who may find it difficult to read and/or write, allowing them to gain peace of mind regarding their health. Ultimately, I hope to bridge the gap between the medical field and everyday people, making healthcare more accessible and understandable.

For my capstone, I created an Earth Day event for SLA to educate students about the climate crisis and ways to be involved in solutions. I organized an event for April 11th, the day before spring break where every SLA student would attend two workshops and learn from volunteer presenters about different aspects of the climate crisis and ways they could get involved in solutions. I struggled with keeping people involved and in attendance leading up to the event both on the presenter side and with students leaving early for spring break. Despite that, there were full workshops and students were interested and still excited to learn. Overall, it was a successful day where every student learned more about the climate crisis.