What I've Been Doing
Scroll through the years to see what I've been doing! Click on an image for more info.
Alumni Leadership Council
Conrad Foundation
During the 2020-2021 year, I have the privilege to be a Team Leader within the Conrad Alumni Leadership Council, co-leading the Develop and Inspire team. Our team focuses on providing resources and opportunities for the Conrad Challenge community through a variety of initiatives like mentorship, webinars, workshops, and more!
The 2019-2020 year was my first year as part of the ALC. On top of regular duties likes helping plan logistics with the rest of the ALC, I also created a “docuseries” video on developing budgeting plans, was part of the team that spearheaded the new webinar series, and co-lead the alumni recruitment process at the end of the competition year.
CardioVisual Internship
During the 2020 Summer, I was an intern at CardioVisual Inc., a medical company aimed at bringing cardiologist-curated and trusted content to patients via their CardioVisual app. With my co-interns, I worked on planning and developing an online website-based e-learning platform and also set up webinars for physician-to-physician content videos.
NASA Space Apps COVID-19 Extention Project
Team Novidien
Originally a project entered into the NASA Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge, Team Novidien’s submission was based on the idea that public health officials could supplement their data with pollutant concentrations detected via satellite/ground stations as more travel would correlate to more pollution and the effectiveness of social-distancing. With the pollution and Google mobility data the team collects, I am creating machine learning algorithms to predict increases in COVID cases in major European cities.
Summer Interdiciplinary Research Internship
NCSU Cruse Lab
Originally brought on for projects to test the effectiveness of nebulized RNA-interference drugs against asthma and pulmonary fibrosis in mouse models, I worked closely with postdoctoral research fellows at NCSU’s Cruse Lab to be trained on proper handling of live mice and worked on developing an apparatus for the drugs to reach the periphery areas of mouse lungs.
When one of the pathologists in the lab mentioned to another colleague on how it’s very time consuming to look through slides and identify/count cells of interest, I proposed a new project to develop a Neural Network based tool to identify and locate cells of interest in order to alleviate pathology-related research bottlenecks. With COVID-19 shutting down the university and my other projects, this project became my main research project over the summer. I finished developing the network and am now comparing the network results against pathologists and preparing a manuscript for publication!
License Plate Reader System
Just to mess around at the beginning of lockdown, I created a system that’s able to read licence plates from images and can be connected to personal security cameras. The accuracy of this system matches other commercial systems and has a lot of potential uses! However, I’ve also made a decision that I will not be showing/giving any parts of this tech to law enforcement, as it could be mishandled to perpetuate the already disastrous discrimination present in many organizations.
Wolf de Nakhre
NCSU Bhangra Dance Team (2019-2020)
Although the pandemic cut competition season really short, I’ve had a great time dancing competitively on NC State University’s Wolf de Nakhre Bhangra team. It was a great way to grow as a dancer (I really got to focus on my technique a lot more), meet new people, and stay active during freshman year!
Radiation Protection in Deep Space
RECON MARC-S
Planning to participate in the NASA HUNCH competition, a group of 4 high school friends and I formed Team RECON to tackle the challenge of protecting against cosmic radiation in deep space. The competition for NASA HUNCH was based around creating a vest with pockets where high density polyethylene sheets could fit over. However, once we created a product, we decided to further it by developing an entire suit (not just a vest with pockets) focused around comfortable protection in deep space. The current state-of-the-art was the AstroRad suit created by the company StemRad, but that too was only a vest. With the goal to enable smooth movement while also having protection, we used Samurai armor as inspiration as a method of overlapping high-density polyethylene “scales” (plus other materials) to maintain protection of the entire body while also providing ample movement ability.
With this product (named the MARC-S), we also entered in the Conrad Spirit of Innovation competition (and won the Power-Pitch award at the international finals) and presented our design at NASA Langley and Kennedy! If you want to learn more about this project, contact me!
Neuroscience Research Internship
Duke University Gong Lab
I was a research intern at Duke University’s Gong Lab from June 2018 to February 2019. While there, I worked with other researchers to train/test a 3D Convolutional Neural Network to segment active neurons from 1-photon calcium-imaging videos of in-vivo mice brains. An image of my poster is shown too!
We genetically encoded the GCaMP protein complex into mice neurons, basically causing a neuron to “light up” whenever an action potential occurs. 2-photon microscopy is usually used to observe the neurons lighting up, but the area covered by that technique is miniscule compared to the area covered in a 1-photon microscopy video. To automate the process of highlighting thousands of neurons from a single area, the Neural Network was developed. With later studies planning to relate various mouse activities to different neurons being active and detected, this tool is one step on the journey of functionally mapping brains.
Asian Cultures Club Officer
NCSSM (2018-2019)
With six other officers, I worked to promote Aisan culture and Asian-American identity across my high school’s (NCSSM) campus. Beyond regularly organizing Asian cultural events, we also worked with the other minority organizations on campus to talk about difficult issues and hosted a trimester-long seminar about Asian-American-Pacific-Islander issues. We also organized AsiaFest (our high school’s largest event with over 140 student-performers and 700 audience members), a celebration of Asian culture through dance, performances, and spoken word.
Residential Life Assistant (RLA)
NCSSM 2nd Hill Residential Hall
My senior year of high school, I was an RLA on the 2nd Hill Residential Hall community at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. On top of developing/maintaining the residential hall community, I also provided guidance and emotional support for 45 hall residents, as well as work with my Co-RLA’s to develop programs designed to promote positive interactions between residents.
WELIFT Exercise Harness
Competing in the NASA HUNCH competition, a group of 4 high school friends and I formed Team WELIFT to take on the HUNCH challenge developing a single point exercise harness. The Orion spacecraft capsule is too small for the current exercise system used on the International Space Station, so it was necessary to develop a single point harness that was able to connect to the new HULK exercise system that NASA has developed. Using the Glenn Harness (used on the ISS treadmill) as a framework and working with designs from heavy-load backpack companies, we modified the harness to place greater stress on the spine/long bones and supplemented our project with modular attachments that could place stress on the bones while the astronaut is not actively exercising.
With this harness, we also entered in the Conrad Spirit of Innovation competition (and became international finalists) and presented our design at NASA Langley, Johnson and Kennedy! If you want to learn more about this project, contact me!
Microbiology Research
My First Intro to Real Scientific Research! (Duke Schmid Lab)
This project was my first exposure to real research! In this project done at the Schmid Laboratory at Duke University, where we explored the influence of knocking out the tbsP gene on the growth and morphology (shape) in H. volcanii (an archaea). This was the first time I was introduced to Python and R as data science and data visualization tools and this project spurred my interest in coding and computer science!