Work & Skills
Over the past 6 years, I have had the opportunity to not only work on research but also gain skills as a teacher, mentor, product design intern and project management intern. Thanks to these opportunities, I was able to work in academia, a startup and a large company. Learn more about my teaching, mentoring, and project management experiences below!
Work Experiences
Skills
Making 🛠️
- Mill
- Lathe
- Shop Tools
- Waterjet
- 3D Printer
- Laser Cutter
- Welding
- Thermoforming
- Prototyping
Software 💻
- Matlab
- SolidWorks
- HTML/CSS
- Python
- Excel
- R
- Learning JavaScript
- Learning Swift
Nanotech 🔬
- Sputterer
- Profilometry
- Atomic Layer Deposition
- Evaporator
- Microscopy (and EDS/EDX)
And More 📚
- Videography
- Web Design
- Mechanical Design
- Policy Memo Writing
- Mandarin
- Spanish
- Fanti/Twi (Ghanaian Languages)
Awards
Georgia Tech
- Sloan Scholar, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Minority Ph.D. (MPHD) Program, awarded in 2020-2021
- Georgia Tech Faces of Inclusive Excellence 2020
- 2nd Place Prize at Georgia Tech Graduate Technical Symposium Poster Competition 2019
- Georgia Tech Career, Research, and Innovation Development Conference Provost Award 2019
MIT
- Fellow, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program 2018
- MIT Emerging Leader Award 2016
- Bridge Builder Award 2016
- Laya W. Weisner Award 2016
Teaching
I took on a position as a teaching
assistant for freshman physics mechanics (8.01) my sophomore year.
I was a physics TA from that time on.
I was an 8.01 TA for three years and an 8.02 (electricity and magnetism) TA for a year.
As a student who had struggled with physics in high school,
I am able to empathize with students who may have difficulty
initially understanding the subject matter.
I led weekly office hours, review sessions and recitations.
My recitation section from my junior year made the card that I am holding in the image and
I still have it to this day!
IBM
As an undergraduate, I had two industry experiences. One experience was
at a small neurotechnology startup (NeuroVigil) where I worked as a
product design intern on a mass-consumer product and designed prototypes
for the enclosures of these products, smaller-market devices and an encoding rig
for manufacturing.
The other experience was at a large company (IBM) where I worked as a
project management intern. Since I cannot provide much information on my
work at the startup due to confidentiality, I will give a brief overview of my experience at IBM.
IBM
At IBM, I was working within their Real Estate Strategy and Operations (RESO) team as a project management intern. I was tasked with aiding to facilitate the team’s transition from an old style of working to a new Agile style of working. Along with aiding this transition, I also co-chaired a client experience surveillance project and created GUIs for more intuitive use of an Excel database for the project managers. At the end of the summer, I created an interactive poster presentation that is portrayed in the images below. The poster demonstrated my summer journey and was modeled off of the game Candy Land. Each colored "tile" was associated with a card that would give a player the next steps to take. All of those cards were based off of experiences I had that summer. The goal of the game was to get to the "AGILE" mark and the winner was allowed to sign the poster as a reward.
Figures: The sketch of my poster for the intern presentations and the actual poster I created
Mentorship
Since my first year at MIT, I sought to act as a mentor for
students who were in situations I once found myself in.
I recognize that many of the oportunities and successes
I have had in life have been through the mentors, teachers
and motivators I've encountered. These people have positively
impacted my life; therefore, I strive to positively impact the lives of others.
I first began participating in community outreach my freshman year
as a project mentor for the MIT Leadership Training Institute.
This student group guided local high school students as they pursued
their own community service projects. I also worked with high school
students in the summer. During the summers before my sophomore and junior years,
I was a residential advisor for various MIT outreach programs for high school students
such as MathRoots, the Engineering Experience (E2) and the
MIT Online Science, Technology, and Engineering Community (MOSTEC).
I would act as a confidant and mentor for the students in my clusters during
these summer programs.
The image is of me and my cluster on the first day of the
Engineering Experience (E2) program run by the MIT Office of Engineering Outreach Programs (OEOP).
I was a participant in one of the OEOP programs when I was a rising senior in high school
and it changed the trajectory of my life, so mentoring feels like paying it forward :)