I spent a good portion of 2014-2015 recovering from three ultimate frisbee-induced concussions, and experimenting with how to decrease my resulting fatigue and migraines using the Quantified Self approach. I gave a talk about it at the Quantified Self global conference in 2015 .
I spent the 2012-2013 academic year doing environmental ethnography research in Hangzhou, China. Here's my personal blog . And here's my research blog. One of my research articles was published on The Atlantic.
As part of Olin's robotic sailing team, I worked on sensor signal processing and helped on mechanical fabrication of the hull. Checkout some pictures/videos of the boat here .
For our Sustainable Design class, Jason Curtis '12, Rebecca Leung '12 and I redesigned the e-book reading experience in the context of reducing environmental impact. We first sought to understand user's needs. We then measured and analyzed the Kindle's environmental impact . Using this information, we came up a redesign that minimized environmental impact while still meeting user needs.
I spent the semester studying at Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France (a suburb of Paris). Here is my blog documenting my studies and travels.
Evan Morikawa '12 and I created a K'Nex differential AND gate . See our video and report . We were inspired by Olin alums Jeff DeCew and Matt Donahoe, who created this 4-bit adder/subtractor out of K'Nex.
For our User Oriented Collaborative Design class, Chris Gallello '12, Jaime McCandless '12, Rose Zeller '12 and I studied subway musicians. After investigating their values and needs, we designed with the musicians to come up with a solution to address one of their biggest problems: finding a spot to play in. Here are two posters showing how our product addresses their needs and fits in their daily life . Finally, here is a picture of our product mockup.
For our Software Design class, Matt Huang '12, Jason Poon '12, Reyner Crosby '13, and I created PyPad, a real-time collaborative text and sketch editor in Python. Think Etherpad with drawing. Here is our final paper . Code is available on Github here .
I led multi-disciplinary team of five Babson, Olin, and Wellesley College students to organize the Grand Challenge Student Conference . One-day conference was attended by around 100 students from over 10 different schools. I also designed the website promoting the conference.
In Mechanical Prototyping class, I, along with fellow teammates, designed and fabricated a sheet metal whale , a rapid prototyped seahorse , and a tractor-in-a-box .
Our Signals and Systems final project allowed Connor Stokes, Tom Lamar '12 and I used speech analysis to create a humor automator . See our video demo to see what I mean.
For our Principles of Engineering course, Zach Brass '12 and I created a robotic arm controlled by a WiiMote. Here's a video .
As part of my music composition class, I composed several pieces, including a string quartet, a piano solo, and a brass duet.