Projects
Coffee Notify
From my first semester, I played a role in the coffee culture at Olin. I started as a barista at Olin's weekly free pop-up coffee shop, and quickly joined leadership. After a while, I started my own coffee cart and ran it (almost) every week from my suite. I quickly ran into the problem that coffee lovers outside of my immediate friends didn't know when I'm running my stand - despite putting up receipt paper ads by dorm entrances. To solve this I made a webapp that allowed me to list future events, and send push notifications to anyone who subscribed. At its peak (right before COVID killed living on-campus) I had almost 10% of the student body (~35 students) subscribed to my events board.
I originally built this app as a Rails API + Vue.js SPA, which supported only my single events board. Seeing the usefulness of this app, I rebuilt it with Phoenix, adding support for multiple users/boards (and to be server rendered for all 3 of my friends who block js). See it live here or check out the code.
ADE Capstone
For my engineering capstone, I joined the Rights & Privacy team. This team was founded to use data analysis and software skills to support criminal justice system reform and prison abolition organizations. In my two semesters on the team I got to know the people working in this space around Boston, and learned a lot about the impacts the criminal system has on communities around the US. As a new team, our primary focus was to meet and learn from the groups doing work in this space to figure out how we can best support their work. In my second semester on the team I lead a data analysis project for Black and Pink Boston. We sent FOIA requests to Massachusetts jails and analyzed the (lack of) data they sent back. This data was used by Black and Pink to guide their advocacy work.
BoardBot
For the course Principles of Engineering, I built a CNC whiteboard drawing robot in a 4 person team. I played the role of Project Manager and was the embedded programmer. We documented the build process and replication instructions here.
Receipt Printer
I found a receipt printer and started experimenting with it. I played with the connection that people have with receipts and how a message is conveyed differently through this medium. Later I tried looping the receipt back into the printer to see what patterns emerged.
I made a receipt printer that collects poll questions via sms for Culture House in Harvard Square.
Now that I have the hardware and software for an email/sms to receipt printer pipeline, I can quickly set it up for events. This one lived at the Olin Library, called Betsy the Build Week Bear.
Soundscape
For an art seminar with Mimi Onuoha, Seungin and I tried to reimagine maps of We built a soundscape board of Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood by recording the sounds of daily life in the area. It was displayed at an event at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
