From 2019 to 2020, I teamed up with two friends for the Technovation Challenge to build a mobile app for social good. We had to brainstorm, design, code from scratch, and market an app that solves some problem in our community. As we brainstormed, I thought of the huge issue we see today of teens who suffer from a lack of confidence due to a fear of failure and judgement. Our solution was to build an app named “Rooting for You” that encourages teens to set challenges for themselves in their daily lives, as well as rewarding them for completing these and pre-set challenges. Our hope was that by taking on these challenges, teens would normalize healthy failure, making them more comfortable with taking beneficial risks in life and allowing them to grow as people. 

To make this app more engaging to our teen audience, we gamified it, presenting the challenges as seeds growing in a garden. During market research and user testing, we took full advantage of the internet, and I was able to collect over 200 responses to our user survey from followers on Instagram in our target audience, many of whom empathized with feeling fear of failure, and were able to give extremely helpful suggestions. Our result was a functional self-help app with colorful graphics. Out of thousands of entries, ours was selected as one of the 5 Regional Winners representing the entire North America. It was also featured during the Technovation World Summit. While it was thrilling to win, our goal for this project was always to support teens’ self-esteem and feelings of self-worth through technology. 

Check out our pitch video!

Princeton AI4ALL was an incredible experience! During this past summer, I had a blast learning about a range of AI-related topics from engaging speakers and nurturing mentors. It was particularly fascinating to hear about the multitude of machine-learning algorithms and how to implement them. My group also applied what we learned by working on AI algorithms in genomics. For the project, we trained models to categorize people’s ethnicities based on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP’s) of their genetic data and compared the results from different learning algorithms. We found that StackingClassifier and Multinomial Naïve Bayes algorithms worked best (above 80% accuracy) for the general population compared to Logistic Regression that worked very well (99%) only for the super-population, which is a subset selected from the world largest groups. I also came to better understand the importance of increasing diversity among AI developers in order to minimize bias. Our field trip to Washington DC was a particularly memorable highlight. In addition to touring the sites at our national capitol, we also had the opportunity to hear from AI policymakers at the National League of Cities and Federal Trade Commission. Just as importantly, I bonded with a group of friends through shared interests in humor and intellectual pursuits.

Even after the summer camp concluded, an extensive network called Changemakers in AI offers frequent workshops and shares opportunities to ensure that AI4ALL alumni receive continued support and encouragement in our pursuits. Before attending AI4ALL, I was always known as the “artist”. I loved working with both traditional and digital art but also had an interest in programming. I thought I would have to choose one field or the other. Thanks to Dr. Olga Russakovsky at AI4ALL, I was introduced to and now work with creAIte, a national non-profit organization founded by AI4ALL alumni, that hosts Artificial Intelligence + Art workshops for middle and high school students. AI4ALL allowed me to realize that I could combine my two passions. I’m super excited to experiment more with the intersection of art and AI.

If you are a high school student and this sounds intriguing to you, please be sure to visit the AI4ALL website to learn more. Their summer programs are held at 11 different universities across the US. Generous scholarships are available for girls and those in underrepresented groups to encourage diversity in the field of AI and computer science. I serve as the AI4ALL Outreach Ambassador and am the Chapter Lead for creAIte, so feel free to contact me if you’d like more details about either of these worthy organizations.

Please take a look at the AI4ALL 2020 flyer here.

I’ve been fortunate to have traveled extensively internationally, but I actually haven’t spent much time traveling within the US. When I discovered that OHS, my online high school, was offering field trip to Montgomery, Alabama during Spring Break 2019, I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to learn “on the road” with my classmates. I’ve only heard about life in the South from Dad, who briefly attended college in Alabama, so I’ve always been curious to see for myself.
 
Our group convened at the Montgomery Airport on Wednesday around noon. After a quick stop for lunch at a Mexican restaurant, we headed to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art to view historical impressionistic portraits and landscapes but also contemporary sculptures and installations. Next, we toured the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, ranked among the ten largest Shakespeare festivals in the world. Our tour guide showed us around backstage, pointed out the ropes, and also the costume room. We even got to see the stage as it would be set for the play we would watch the following day. After a dinner of pizza and popsicles, we enjoyed a Shakespeare Performance Orchestra, where we discussed Shakespeare’s life and tried fun exercises with the first lines of Romeo and Juliet. We created a mini 5-line play, practiced intoning in the right places, and pausing at the right times.
 
Thursday began with a breakfast of grits and waffles. Then, we headed to the Civil Rights Museum, where we learned about all the horrific acts against African Americans and those who supported the Civil Rights movement. So many innocent people, bystanders, and just people with kind hearts were brutally murdered by Ku Klux Klan. I was shaken by the sheer millions supporting Klan members. We viewed portraits of forty lynching victims and paid respects at a black fountain memorial built in their honor. After lunch at a Jamaican restaurant, we toured the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. Our guide, Wanda, was a wonderfully kind and inspirational woman who told us all about the building’s background and how Martin Luther King influenced their lives and history. Later, we took a walking and bus tour of Montgomery with a reconciliation artist named Michelle Browder. She showed us passageways where slaves were illegally smuggled in as well as Rosa Parks’ house. After dinner, we returned to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and watched Steel Magnolias. The play, which took place in a salon, was heartwarmingly sad yet also hilarious.
 
On Friday morning, we made an early start to the Legacy Museum for Peace and Justice. Visitors were immediately struck with holograms of slaves retelling their tragic tales of suffering and separation. Some sang songs to raise their spirits. This set the tone for the rest of the museum, a space devoted to the story of injustice against African Americans from the time they were first kidnapped into slavery. They were lynched by mobs, who considered them less than human. We watched documentaries explaining how even today, Black men are over-represented in jails and unfairly tried for crimes they didn’t commit simply due to their skin color. Since this museum was such an emotional experience, we took some time in the bookstore to reflect upon what we just saw.
 
After a quick boxed lunch together, we walked to the Freedom Riders where the guide shared with us about the peaceful protests held on the Greyhound buses. Young people of different races would board at an integrated stop, then ride down to the segregated stops in Alabama. They met no resistance until then, where huge numbers of protected Klan members attacked them, throwing a bomb in the bus. The attackers didn’t bother to cover their faces because the police and authorities were on their side. However, when four hundred people from all over the country joined the protest and were all placed in a Mississippi prison, the government was forced to intervene. Finally, the entire bus system was successfully integrated.
 
Next, we visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial for all the thousands lynching victims in hundreds of counties throughout the country. It was a somber place, built of metal blocks hanging from the ceiling, marked simply with the names of those murdered and the counties where the atrocities took place. We spent quite some time here, pondering the events that had unfolded. Outside the memorial, a complete set of identical blocks were made for each county to bring to their city centers as a reminder to its proud citizen of the lynching history and reality of what happened. Later, we listened to a speaker discuss the modern day effects of racial prejudice to children, to adults, to those accused and arrested. After dinner in the hotel, we watched Our Town at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. This play dealt with the lives within a town, the interrelationships between young people, and advanced into a more existential view of life and death and what really matters.
 
On Saturday morning, we visited the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, located in the house they spent about a year together in. Zelda was an underrated artist and writer who struggled with mental illness and improper treatment methods later in life. Scott was the famous author who wrote classic novels including The Great Gatsby. The two had interesting lives, though they had interpersonal conflicts, leading to them living separately even though they were still married.
 
After a delicious Alabaman buffet lunch, we spent afternoon at the grounds of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. We attended a discussion about community theatre and how they interact with the communities they serve. For the next few hours, we lounged around the grassy park area around the theatre, where my friends and I had some fun photoshoots and mucked around. The next activity was quite interesting; it was a narrated changeover between the set of the previous night’s play, Our Town, and tonight’s play, Romeo and Juliet. We enjoyed a picnic dinner in the Shakespeare Gardens, then returned inside to watch the play. This amazing play exceeded all my expectations, for it was executed with superb emotion. All the actors were phenomenal and the directing choice to set the play in a 1900’s school warehouse in modern apparel coupled with swords was really awesome.
 
On Sunday, our final morning together, we closed with a group reflection upon the incredible trip as a whole. Despite a lack of sleep, I am grateful for this brief but intensely memorable experience. We delved into the Civil Rights movement and also Shakespearean dramas, two topics which may seem tangential but are truly interwoven within this jewel of a city, Montgomery in Alabama. 

In January of 2019, we returned to Japan for another 3 week visit to Hakuba, Kanazawa, Kaga Onsen, Osaka, Kyoto and of course Tokyo.
 
From Tokyo, we took the bullet train to Nagano then a taxi to the town of Hakuba, which hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics, but is now mostly run by Australian sports enthusiasts. It was snowing, and we rented all of our ski gear. We had shabu shabu at the hotel for dinner. The food was rather expensive because we were out in the mountains. The next day, we met our ski instructor outside the hotel. Jessica grew up in the French Alps, but because her mother was English, she spoke with a perfect British accent. Apparently, she was a ski racer in the Junior Olympics, which means she must have been amazing. However, she couldn’t continue because she broke her back, then on other occasions broke several ribs, broke her hand, was frostbitten, and endured other horrendous injuries. She was definitely an interesting character, to say the least. For the two six-hour days, she brought us down many slopes at Iimori Resort and helped us to improve our skills. I started around level 4 because I was just learning to parallel ski. My brother, Joshua, was probably a level 3 because he still relied on the “snowplow” or “pizza” method. For lunch on the second day, she even brought us to a pizza restaurant at the base of the other side of Goryo Mountain.
 
After two days of skiing, we took the train to Kanazawa where we spent three nights. This city was famous for their snow crabs and produce 99% of the gold leaf in Japan. One of the days, we visited one of the most famous Japanese gardens, Kenrokuen Garden. Because it was winter, most of the trees were tied using spiderweb-like ropes to prevent snow from crushing the branches. The garden was intricately shaped to imitate nature, with beautiful fountains and waterfalls. There was a very famous lantern at the center along with a 300-year-old fountain. A teahouse sat in the middle overlooking the calm waters.
 
After Kanazawa, we took a quick, twenty-minute train ride to Kaga Onsen where we stayed at an amazing ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. The rooms were Japanese style with futons for beds and even included a private onsen or hot bath. In the afternoon, the owner of the ryokan invited us for a welcoming Japanese tea ceremony. Here, he executed a methodical series of rituals to make the tea and served it to us in bowls. For dinner that night, we had a huge meal of crabs; they were served raw, boiled, baked, and also cooked with porridge. One of the servers told us that our family alone had eaten a whole SIXTEEN crabs. I don’t know if that’s accurate but it sure was a feast.
 
The next day, we took a walk along the river around the small town of Yamanaka. The plant life was beautiful and all the rocks were covered in green moss. Apparently, this area was a source of inspiration for the renown haiku poet Basho. My dad challenged us to a competition to find mushroom first. He won, but I found the most mushrooms. For lunch, we ate simple but delicious handmade soba noodles in town. Afterward, we relaxed in the onsen and had a meal of net-caught duck for dinner.
 
Our next stop was the big city of Osaka. We were excited to return to the malls connected to our hotel in the Umeda train station complex. This time, my brother and I explored the three interconnected malls on our own while our parents went out for dinner. I took Joshua for dinner on the top floor, where there was a huge selection of delicious restaurant options. He really wanted to dine at the revolving sushi bar, but we eventually decided to have udon. I ordered a sukiyaki beef udon, and it was really good. Afterward, we went to the toy store in the basement of a connecting mall. Here, they had all kinds of the things he liked, including anime figures and LEGO sets. In the very front, there were several rows of gachapon machines, and I bought several capsules. Over the next few days, we kept coming back to this store and I bought some merch for my Canadian friend, including a few capsules. The second night, we had okonomiyaki, a type of fried Japanese pancake with soy sauce and mayonnaise. It was okay but too much food. On our final day, Dad took me to a tasty udon shop in town.
 
After Osaka, we took a quick train ride to Kyoto. We had been to this city several times, for it is one of the most historical cities in Japan. Since it was sunny when we arrived, we immediately headed for our favorite area, the Philosopher’s Walk along a small stream. In the stream, we sought out our fish buddies that we look for every year we go. They were more scattered this year, and we found large fish, medium fish, and tiny little guys. There were even ducks swimming along the stream, and a few cats walking around the passages. Due to rain the next day, we lunched indoors at the Takashimaya mall, where we had unagi/eel bowls. Mine came with a kettle of soup to pour over the rice. For dinner, we had an elaborate kaiseki meal at Hyotei. Apparently, the meal was similar to how it was served 400 years ago to the emperors. The next day was the 21st of January. On the 21st of each month, there is the Kobo-san Flea Market in the Toji Temple filled with street food, antique pottery, second-hand kimonos, decorative items, and so much more.
 
Back in Tokyo, we got to visit the new Toyosu Fish Market and dine at Quintessence, a fine French restaurant. On the second to last day of our trip, we visited Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo to visit the teamLab Borderless Digital Museum. This was a massive museum filled with moving flower projections, animated paintings, and simulations. Such a feast for the senses! Entering the first room, a digital garden, our eyes were filled with beautiful flowers that bloomed and fell around us. There was a room where butterflies emerged from cocoons projected onto people’s bodies. There were so many different rooms: one where we could sit peacefully amidst waves, one where hundreds of multi colored lantern-like light bulbs hung from the ceiling, one where we lay in a “nest” and felt like birds while being shown a dizzying video on the ceiling, and many more. My favorite was one where we colored animals on sheets of paper, then the staff scanned it in. Almost miraculously, the animal sprung to life. I colored in a rainbow alligator that crawled around and ate insects. Joshua made a bird that flew away. There were many other things I wanted to explore, but unfortunately we ran out of time. Because I have an interest in art and technology, this type of experience really inspired me and gave me ideas on how both fields can be used together.
 
I always bring home fond memories from our trips to Japan where I can enjoy the cutting technology new blended with refined culture combined with exquisite food.