project-appendix

My team and I are currently working on this project in my Product Management class. We are trying to come up with a product that would help college students develop new connections and sustain existing friendships in a remote-first world. More details to come when project is completed. 

Brief Description: When the COVID-19 pandemic broke, many government decision makers around the world had to act quickly. One of the professors in my department, Professor Ashish Goel, realized that there was a disproportionate distribution of efforts to model the pandemic between previously colonized countries and the west. He put together a project class to use computer modeling to help previously colonized countries confront the pandemic. My team and I worked with contacts at the Presidential TaskForce on Covid-19 in Botswana to model the unique problem of managing the risk of cases imported via the ground transportation of essential goods and services from their hard-hit neighbors. I recorded a YouTube video to go over the final presentation we gave in more detail. After the class ended, I recruited another colleague to continue working on the project under Professor Goel's supervision. You can read up on our work here. 

Brief Description: As the Defense Threat Reduction Agency continues to improve the preparedness of the United States Military to respond to CWA attack events against the homeland or their allies, one of the areas of focus is on the technology needed to warn of the presence of chemical weapon agents. The accurate and timely detection of these chemical weapon agents is important for two reasons. On the one hand, unnecessary evacuations are costly and should be minimized. On the other hand, failure to evacuate civilians in the event of an actual CWA attack can have catastrophic results. Given the uncertainty in the distribution of attacks over different types of location, there is a need for whatever technology packages that DTRA invests in to have enough flexibility to be used in an extensive range of contexts. Our project hopes to provide insights on an optimal investment in a portfolio of CWA sensing technology to minimize the expected cost per life saved across all probable attack scenarios.  Read our final report here.

Brief Description: I worked with two colleagues from the Graduate School of Business on this project as part of the Startup Garage course at the Stanford GSB. The project sought to alleviate the frustrations of car owners and drivers in Lagos, Nigeria (with the hopes of expanding to the rest of the African continent) around the repair and maintenance of second-hand vehicles. As a self-identified entrepreneur and aspiring Venture Capitalist serving African entrepreneurs, I joined this project as a way of getting my "feet wet". I was especially drawn to this project because of its potential to generate dignified and well paying employment for many in Nigeria by semi-professionalizing the second-hand car repair industry. While I will not be continuing with the project, which has now been rebranded as AutoCorp, I am grateful to my team for inviting me to take part in their journey. I have learned a lot about the iterative formulation, validation, and testing of hypotheses in a startup. These are lessons I will take forth to my next entrepreneurial adventure, formal employment opportunity, and especially, to the entrepreneurs I will support in my future work as a VC.

Abstract: An effective Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) will mitigate the risk of stalls during takeoff for Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft. In this paper, we develop a flight simulator for modeling the flight trajectory of an aircraft throughout takeoff. We then proceed to model the MCAS system aboard these aircraft as a discrete-time Markov Decision Process and subsequently compute the MDP’s optimal policy. Using this optimal policy, the MCAS system is able to prevent 95% of the stalls that would have otherwise occurred in absence of the MCAS system’s intervention. Read our paper here. 

Executive Summary: We undertook this project to help streamline the grant application process at [the client]. Having previously lost lost funding of at least $50,000 due to a missed e-mail, the [client] team is concerned about the possibility of missing an important deadline or grant requirement. This is because they do not currently have standard protocols across the organization to manage the multiple grants they receive from different sources every year. Upon further investigation, we found that [client] is also at risk of losing its institutional records in the event of turnover in their leadership. Furthermore, their lack of standardized protocols for record keeping and approaching the grant application process leads to avoidable inefficiencies and frustrations within the team. The key people involved in the grants process have different comfort levels with technical tools, but are eager for a solution that simplifies their work. With these findings in mind, we recommend that [the client] harness their existing technical platforms to create a system for safeguarding institutional records and enabling collaboration within the team. Moreover, we recommend that they incorporate Asana into their grant application process to help keep track of the requirements of the different grants they receive. Lastly, we recommend that [the client] standardize their processes beyond just grant writing, including the periodic review of their protocols for record keeping and grant writing. 

We worked with Spring Valley Coffee to help them with their Social Impact Strategy. We conducted an ecosystem analysis and identified opportunities where they could create sustainable value for various stakeholders beyond just the shareholders, employees, and the coffee bean suppliers. 

I worked with Professor Pamela Hinds and Tim Weiss on The Emergence of Data Analytics in South Africa and Technology Entrepreneurship in Kenya. On the Data Analytics project, I was responsible for identifying data sources, then analyzing them for insights to inform an upcoming study by my advisors. I identified the key variables the study should pay close attention to, as well as recommend questions the study should attempt to answer. Through this study, I gained insights into factors affecting the adoption and use of data analytics by corporate, governmental, and educational institutions in South Africa. On the Technology Entrepreneurship project, I designed the Coding Rubric to enable my advisor to analyze the data and draw useful insights from it. I also assisted with the training of the other research assistants who joined the project along the way. I gained insights into some of the factors that may affect the success of technology startups in the Kenyan ecosystem. 

This fellowship, funded through the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University, allowed me to intern with Sarvodaya. I worked closely with the Executive Director evaluating some of their online systems, including their Monitoring and Evaluation Systems, and applying minor edits to some of them, for example their Deshodaya website template. Additionally, I built a local database management system powered by Microsoft Access. Although the project is still incomplete, I was a part of a team of volunteers debugging an online database management system. I improved on my investigation skills, database design with Microsoft Access, and ability to work well within a virtual team. I also learned a little bit of web development. This experience has highlighted some opportunities for growth in my programming skills. As shown on the picture above, I also assisted in whatever task needed to be done. This ranged from proofreading some of my colleagues' documents in English to participating in the office-wide service activities such as clearing grass because of a dengue outbreak. This was a fulfilling experience, and it also allowed me to see that I want to impact the world through for-profit activities.