Joyce Hansen
Machine Learning, Software Development and IT-Security
Machine Learning, Software Development and IT-Security
I started to develop a strong interest in Computer Science since my first contact to a person PC which back then used Windows 2000 and was pretty slow compared to todays modern operating systems. I started porgramming in school at the age of around 14. It all started with Java, Arduino and Pascal. During my studies Python, C, C# and C++ with a tiny bit of R rounded up the package. Beside an exposure to SQL during my studies I am currently designing a MySQL database for a personal project to further enhance my database design and SQL knowledge even further.
My studies in Computer Science started at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology where I studied from day til night with a group of good friends, which I got to know during the orientation phase of the university's "onboarding". We kept each other motivated and combined our knowledge to solve the difficult tasks we were asked to solve to be admitted for the exam. Which we managed to achieve but the exam itself was too difficult to pass so I knew that it would be very hard to pass the exam even with taking advantage of a tutoring that the University offered. So I decided to change University and as I always wanted to live near an ocean, I started looking for an interessting opportunity which I found in Stralsund, Germany.
In Stralsund a small city near the island Ruegen and directly at the baltic sea I found a realy interessting course of study. It was It-Security and mobile Systems which combined my interest in a deep understanding on how different infromation technologies work and get to know their security issues and furthermore to get started with mobile app development and a little bit of robot programming, which were all part of that Bachelor's Degree.
During my Bachelor Studies my interest in artificial intelligence rose, and as there were not many IT-Security related courses in the following up Master's degree of my University, I decided to look for an opportunity to get a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence. I found an opportunity at the University of Applied Sciences Karlsruhe, so in my previous town of studies. So I decided to apply which was successfull on the second attempt. So my studies in Machine Learning started.
If you don't know my Transition Story yet, take a sneak peak in the Life Story Tab.
During my master thesis real-time semantic segmentation for custom objects like the docking-station of the company's own autonomous mobile robot (AMR) was developed using synthetic data mixed with an extraordinary low amount of real data (<2%)
The semantic segmentation runs fully on the hardware of the AMR taking into account the limited computing power.
Code Private
First Project using Computer Vision techniques and a Neural Network for the purpose of detecting toy road signs from the live-feed of the camera of a TurtleBot3 robot. Pictures of the toy signs were taken and manually labeled with different light conditions and in different locations. Those images were then used for transfer learning on a pretrained MobileNet SSD. The results were very prone to the lightning settings of the camera so that a small change in the lighting configuration of the robot's camera led to a very bad detection rate. So there were sill major enhancements of the dataset possible. For example, randomly changing the lighting parameters of the pictures from the training dataset.
Small 2 Week project in a small team for the NPL Assignment of the AI Lab for the Artificial Intelligence Course during the master studies. The Review was conditioned on a free choosable title and a choosable rating (1-5 Stars).
Here is an example from the results using the book title "Harry Potter in Space" and a bad rating of 2 Stars:
i bought this book on a whim, so i had high hopes. It was so poorly written ( the main character, harry potter in space age, gets sucked out of a strange world ). the book started out as a very interesting read. the characters reactions to the world were very interesting. however, as the story went on, i got bored.
During my bachelor thesis a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) was implemented and trained on pianorolls which were gained with pypianoroll from midi files to be able to generate new song snippets of your favorite music artist.
In my free time I love to go for a walk around the neighboorhood and pet the local cats, which already know me well and accompany me on the walk. I also love to go hiking in the nature, mountains and in caves. Beside that I also love sporty activities like playing table tennis, cycling and go swimming. I also enjoy a good time with my Friends and Family. I am into Harderstyles Music and started to learn producing Harder Styles Music especially Frenchcore with Vital and FLStudio so stay tuned for my first release planned in late 2024.
It all began in March 2020. It was a difficult time as I was writing my bachelor thesis and was overwhelmed by the complexity of writing my first scientific work. It was a that moment when my life changed completely. Because I remembered something. A thought that always came back to my mind now and then. It was a situation over 10 years ago, where a friend of my sister offered me to try on her shoes as I had shoe size 41 at that time and she had that size too. I was a bit overwhelmed by the situation and even though I would have liked to try them on, because they had a small heel, I could just think about that it is not appropriate for a boy to put on women shoes and how to even walk in them? I will surely make a fool of myself, and they will laugh at me like sadly everybody did at that time. Even though I knew that they would very probably not laugh at me, I did not try them on and missed the opportunity which I thought about for a long time.
In March 2020 when the thought came back, I realized that I am over 1000km away from my family, that I live on my own so nobody would see what I do, nobody would laugh at me, and nobody would judge me. This was where my life started changing, changing for the better.
So, I went looking on a big online stores website to look for heels in my size, which was now a huge 46. I thought that there sure would not be any shoes in my size and that the opportunity I had as a kid will forever be missed. But to my surprise there was one pair of heels in size 46. They didn’t look good and were not that cheap, but they were the only ones that I could try on and send back afterwards. Because that was the plan even though it was not a got plan as returns are not very good for the environment.
So, I pressed the “Buy Now” Button and I was very excited for them to arrive. The 3 days I waited for them were very exciting and long because I was really happy to finally be able to try on those kinds of shoes even though I was very unsure if that was a good idea. I checked the tracking status of the package like every 5 Minutes until they finally arrived. I ran to the package office to pick up my parcel and went fast back to my room to take a first glance at them and try them on.
I carefully opened the package and took a first look at them. They looked as bad as in the picture I thought but that was not important. So, I finally slipped into the first heel. It was new. It was different. It somehow felt good. So, I pulled up the zipper slowly. “Will I even be able to walk in them?”, I thought. A lot was going through my head. I took the second heel and slipped into it and pulled up the zipper. It felt really good, and I had a feeling that a huge load was taken of my mind.
When I finally stood up, it started to feel very strange but in a good way. I tried to walk a few steps and realized that I must have a straight posture to be able to walk and that was not easy as I had a lot of back pain from time to time. So, I thought that if I put them on, they sure will also help me taking a straight posture and easing my backpain. So, I started calling them my pedagogical slippers.
The following days I was always very excited to get home and put on my pedagogical slippers. I finally started to feel happiness again. And as I always loved long red hair and always wanted to know how leggings feel, so I ordered both. When they arrived, I had to try on the wig as soon as possible so I just put It on even though I did not knew how to correctly do it. When it finally fitted me, I looked in the mirror. Even though I must have looked horrible, it was the first time that I kind of liked my mirror image.
It was then when everything started changing very fast to a point where I started to question my gender. At first, I thought that I would be genderfluid which means that you sometimes feel male and sometimes female. But I never really felt male, but it was the role I was assigned to at birth, so I kept it. But I had to find a name for my female side as my old name did not suit my look so I thought which name might be suitable. Instantly a girl named Joyce Ilg came to my mind as she looks great and behaved a bit maleish in my opinion so that suited perfectly. It was at that point where Joyce became my choice.
As my natural hair grew longer and longer and my female clothes started to dominate my wardrobe, the gender question came back to my mind. I started asking myself if I might be Transgender. This thought kept me busy for quite a long time. Because it is a huge “decision”. I started thinking about my past which was not very good and suddenly everything made sense. It made sense that I was more emotional than the other boys. It made sense that I had more female friends than male friends. It made sense that I always hated my mirror image. It made sense that I felt different my whole life and I finally knew why. I am Transgender.
Since the point I knew that I am Transgender, it took a long long time to get to the point where I am today, where I finally have the emotional strength to stand to myself and defend my choices if anybody says something against it because my severe depressions are finally almost completely gone and I feel better than ever before even if I still have a long hard way in from of me. I have the luck to have a lot of great friends that support me in anything I do and most important my mother supports me in a very wholesome way. Even though she still has some troubles with it, she is doing her best to support me on my way. I am very thankful for anybody who supports me in any way.
Happy International Transgender Day of Visibility and Happy Easter
Joyce Hansen (31.03.2024)