Senior Year!
COLLEGE UPDATE
May 1st, 2020
After being admitted to a number of reputable undergraduate computer science programs, including NYU and 3 of the United States' 20 highest-ranking computer science programs, I decided to commit to the Stevens Institute of Technology.
Although the school wasn't among the highest-ranking universities that I was accepted into, I chose to attend Stevens because the school offered me an absurdly convincing set of institutional merit scholarships that I simply could not turn down. The decision was very difficult (in fact, I had originally committed to NYU and UMD), but after much deliberation, I decided to go to a school that allowed me to stay close to home while paying next to nothing for my education.
Given that college students may very well be paying $100,000 for online Zoom lessons regardless of the prestige or ranking of our universities during the upcoming academic year, I decided that I might as well do it in an environment that I feel comfortable in.
I hope to take advantage of the school's proximity to New York City when seeking internships, and I hope to participate in some of the school's ongoing research efforts in fields that I am passionate about.
Currently, I plan to pursue a master's degree in computer science directly after getting my B.S. from Stevens. Maybe I can attend a prestigious school then!
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Until then, GO DUCKS!
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Update: The dilemma had plagued me for quite some time, but I am surprisingly happy with my decision. I wrote a blog post about chasing prestige, the never-ending quest to accomplish more, and finding happiness through it all.
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Update: Lol I transferred to Columbia.
GETTING THE FIRST PRINT ISSUE OF THE REINVENTED MAGAZINE IN THE MAIL!
October 21st, 2019
After months of incredibly hard work, we were able to send our very first print issue of the magazine off to the printers! Today, I received my own copies of the first issue, and I couldn't be more thrilled.
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It is wonderful that months of hard work has translated into such an empowering, tangible product. I felt an overwhelming rush of positive emotions while flipping through the magazine's pages and reading the articles that I had poured over with our staff.
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I am so proud to be part of such a wonderful organization and cannot wait to publish more print issues for girls around the world.
BUILDING A ROBOT IN 48 HOURS!
September 21st, 2019
This year, Prototype G decided to adopt an FTC tradition that is practiced by many teams across the globe--Ri2D! Shortly after kickoff (when our challenge is released), we had a brainstorming session with the team. We all came up with ideas for the robot and started CADing them. After CADing and reCADing several designs, I developed one that I was very happy with (surprisingly, the first design idea I came up with was the meta for the season!). I was able to 3D print multiple parts for it using the 3D printing credit I received after winning the Fix the Future contest at the library and prep for our robot in
48 hours challenge. 3D printed parts and RedBulls in hand, we were able to successfully prototype a number of parts for our robot despite the fact that we were missing several key items (including a chain breaker for the type of chain we planned to use on the robot). Although the significant shortage of parts and tools meant that we didn't get to make as much progress as we had hoped to make by the end of the session, we still had a very thorough design plan and were a lot farther than we had been at this stage in previous seasons. I hope this is a tradition that Prototype G continues in years to come.
ENSURING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF PROTOTYPE G: TEACHING CLASSES AND CREATING DOCUMENTS
September 9th, 2019
Understanding the importance of sharing my knowledge with my younger teammates in order to ensure the sustainability of my team even after I graduate, I began to find different ways to document all of my knowledge and ensure that my younger team members were actively absorbing all of this information.
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I have been teaching Java lessons each summer, but I was afraid of more niche fields and pieces of information being lost upon my graduation. In order to prevent this, I started creating guided worksheets and documents for my team to fill out. Each month, I create a handful of documents with guiding questions and sources to seek information from and assign the documents to different students based on their area of interest.
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An example of one such document can be found here, in the documents section of this website. This particular document is about different ways to protect electrical on an FTC robot.
CREATING THE PROTOTYPE DATABASE AND THE PROTOTYPE FAMILY
July 11th, 2019
In an effort to maintain the sustainability of my FTC team and to aid other FIRST teams who may be struggling to advance in the competition, I created two systems: the Prototype Database and the Prototype Family.
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The first established a team match and creation system that Prototype G used throughout the season (and will use in future years) to match prospective FIRST students and parents with local teams with open slots or with other parents in their location (to start new teams) to share the joy of FIRST with new students.
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The Prototype Family is a system that I created to mentor FIRST teams. I established two types of mentee teams: child teams and standard mentee teams. Teams choose between the two types based on their willingness to commit to the Prototype Family and expressed need for mentorship from our team members.
Child teams and mentee teams are assigned mentors from Prototype G, mentoring schedules, engineering notebooks protocols, team merchandise, access to Prototype G's public outreach events, unified team branding, etc. It brought all of our teams together, and it encouraged the students we mentored to consider joining our team in following years.
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These two systems went on to win multiple outreach awards at multiple competitions, and it was one of the driving forces behind our judges giving us the Inspire award (the most prestigious FTC award) at our January qualifier.
MY SECOND SUMMER INTERNING AT SES
June 14th, 2019
I had the most wonderful time working as a Space Systems and Operations intern for Colleen McKee this summer! As the only intern hired to work in this department, I was able to work a project that will be used by the Princeton satellite operators. I wrote a number of command lists that will be used to shut down various subsystems of certain satellites that SES operates during the satellites' retirement and passivation process.
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At the conclusion of the internship (my project was actually extended by a month!), I had the opportunity to share my work with all of the Princeton employees during an intern poster day. It was so much fun!
Junior Year
WINNING THE FIX THE FUTURE COMPETITION
June 15, 2019
After becoming a finalist for the Fix the Future competition, I was required to prepare a 5-minute presentation about my original proposal on tackling gender inequality in engineering and technical fields. I was asked to present this to my competitors, a live audience, and a panel of distinguished judges who were representatives of esteemed businesses and organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Princeton Biolabs. After sitting through a handful of insightful presentations, I was asked to present my solution. My presentation, like many others before mine, ended up running for about 8 minutes, but the judges were very impressed by my passion, research, and presentation skills. They commended me on my presentation and then asked a few questions about my future plans and potential changes I would make to my proposed solution. The representative from Princeton Biolabs also invited us to a public STEM conference the company will be hosting after hearing my presentation. After the last finalist had presented, the judges decided on a winner. After considering my level of research, attention to detail, passion for the subject, and presentation skills, I was selected to be the winner of WW-P's Fix the Future competition.
BECOMING THE PRESIDENT OF WWPHSN'S TSA CHAPTER
June 04, 2019
After two years of serving as the Reporter on West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North's Technology Student Association chapter's Executive Board, Mr. Iannelli, our adult advisor, asked me to become its president. In an email he sent to the chapter, he wrote "Aparna has been a member of our executive board since our inception. She has shown tremendous commitment to our organization along with excellent leadership qualities. We are very excited to see her take up her new office". I'm excited to step into my new role and for all the changes we will be making to this chapter next year.
BECOMING A FIX THE FUTURE FINALIST
June 04, 2019
As part of its 25th Anniversary of the Science Center, the Plainsboro Public Library is holding a competition called "Fix the Future". Students in Middle School and High School were invited to submit a proposal addressing one of the following Global Problems using science, technology, education and any other tools they can bring to bear on the problem. “Fix the Future” is a two-round contest. During the first round, contestants were expected to submit proposal forms describing theoretical ways they would address one of the Global Problems using a combination of methods. My proposal was about Gender Inequality in Engineering and Technical fields. You can read the proposal here. After a round of judging, I was selected to be one of the ten finalists who will be presenting our solutions to a panel of judges from reputable groups such as Lockheed Martin, Princeton Biolabs. One winner will be chosen on June 15th. You can learn more about the competition here.
HELPING CODE NINJAS PRINCETON BECOME THE FIRST TO START AN FLL TEAM
June 01, 2019
The owner of the Code Ninjas Princeton franchise had heard of my experience and interest in programming (through my peers who were already working at Code Ninjas) and asked me to submit my resume to him. Initially, I had been asked to teach young students to program in Scratch and Python, but upon hearing of my FIRST experience during the interview, the owner asked me to help him build his robotics program. Days after the interview, I submitted a formal proposal and season breakdown to him. Impressed by my work, he agreed to go with my plan of action. We became the first Code Ninjas within the United States to get approval to start our own FLL teams. We had our first meeting today. It was a great success. The students absolutely loved working together and are excited to start their pre-season with me and the two other mentors (who are high school Code Ninjas employees who later asked to join the initiative).
MEETING DR. OLGA RUSSAKOVSKY FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
May 06, 2019
After meeting Dr. Ryan P. Adams from Princeton University and hearing him mention that he knew Dr. Russakovsky, I was keen on meeting her. I had heard about her efforts to diversify Artificial Intelligence, and I had watched lectures and interviews she had conducted in which she discussed the importance of diversity in computer science and artificial intelligence. She had spoken of the disastrous effects that having a homogenous group developing Machine Learning models can enable.
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I scheduled for Prototype G to meet her in order to discuss issues pertaining to girls in technology and more applications of Computer Vision (she specializes in CV). It was incredible to meet someone who was so well-versed in a subject that I had only dabbled in during my free time. I hope to reach out to her later on in our season to discuss more specific applications of CV in the game.
THE 2019 DETROIT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP—WE WON!
April 27, 2019
After being selected as a Dean's List Finalist at the NJ State Championship, and confirming that I will be attending FIRST's Detroit World Championship, I was asked to be an Honorary LANbro for one last time (2019 Worlds would be LANbros' last official competition, and I was invited to compete on their drive team). LANbros was made up of 4 team members (Jack from NJ, Erik from MN, Dylan from OH, and me). We consistently performed well during our qualification matches. By the end of our qual matches, we were ranked #1, and LANbros had gone through the entire season undefeated in our qualification matches.
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After winning an intense set of division semi-final matches, we were officially named the Edison Division alliance captain and were transported to Ford Field to compete in finals. Despite constantly being in the spotlight and on camera, Ford Field was an incredible opportunity. I was able to bond with a number of talented FTC students (on both our alliance and the opposing alliance) before competing. Our first finals match was an easy win. Right before our second match, however, our second alliance partner's robot broke, and we ended up losing the match. We had to push for one last match to determine which alliance would win. The third and final match was incredibly intense. Our first alliance partner's robot unexpectantly malfunctioned at the very end of the match, and the refs covered the live score towards around the last thirty seconds, so we weren't sure how much we had scored by the end. When the final score was revealed, we lost our composure--our teammates were screaming, crying, and jumping up and down. One of our team members swung an Inspire banner over his head. LANbros had won the 2019 FTC World Championship.
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A video about my experience at worlds can be found here.
DEAN'S LIST LUNCHEON
April 26, 2019
The Dean's List Luncheon surpassed my expectations. Not only was I able to connect with former Dean's List students and FTC alumni, but I also had the chance to listen to speeches from admissions officers of various prestigious universities (such as MIT and Yale) and the founders of FIRST. Each of them congratulated us on our achievements and urged us to apply to a number of prominent programs, each of which currently has a great number of FIRST alumni within their student body.
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I was also staying at the same hotel as many FIRST executives, so I had the unique opportunity to speak to a number of them about FTC and my experience as a student on an all-girls team. They also asked me about the work I had done within my team/community to be recognized as a Dean's List Finalist. I look forward to reconnecting with these officials once the next FTC season starts up.
BECOMING A DEAN'S LIST FINALIST
March 10, 2019
"The Kamen family sponsors an Award for selected top students known as the FIRST Dean’s List. Since its introduction in 2010, the FIRST Dean’s List Award has attracted the attention of prestigious colleges and universities who desire to recruit FIRST Dean’s List students"(FIRST).
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Since starting FIRST Tech Challenge, I always had a seemingly laughable dream of being selected as a Dean's List Finalist. I never truly believed that I had what it takes to be identified as a Finalist knowing that there were only 4 students in the state of New Jersey that are selected as a Dean's List Finalist. Finalists are defined to be "examples of student leaders who have led their Teams and communities to increased awareness for FIRST and its mission. These students have also achieved personal technical expertise and accomplishment. It is the intention of FIRST that these individuals will continue on, post-Award, as great leaders, student alumni, and advocates of FIRST"(FIRST).
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Every year at the New Jersey State Championship, the NJ FIRST Affiliate Partners, Pat and Vince Frascella, announce the Dean's List Finalists. "This year, we had 57 Dean's List Semi-Finalists", Pat had announced.
I was honored to be selected to be one of four students among the 57 applicants to be named a Dean's List Finalist.
I jogged over to Pat and Vince, who told the competing teams an unscripted speech about my dedication to the FIRST program and my positive attitude, and took a picture with my certificate--my ticket to worlds.
"See you at Detroit," Vince said. I had double qualified for worlds.
FTC NEW JERSEY STATE CHAMPIONSHIPSHIP WITH 9971
March 10, 2019
9971 LANbros is a world-renowned one-man FIRST Tech Challenge team from Southampton, New Jersey. The team, since its start three years ago, has grown an incredible amount. By their second year, they became the semi-finalist captain in the New Jersey State Championship, the semi-finalist captain in the Pennsylvania State Championship, then placed at the East Super Regional and qualified for the FIRST World Championship in St. Louis where they ranked 27th in the World. By their third year, they won NJ states, won PA states, became the finalist captain at East Super Regionals, qualified for the FIRST World Championship in Detroit, set the world record for highest points scored in a match at Worlds, and then became the semi-finalist second pick at Detroit. This year, in addition to winning every meet and qualifier they attended, they also won the Pennsylvania State Championship, qualified for the FIRST World Championship in Detroit, and set the world record for highest points scored in a match once again.
I am close friends with Jack Nugent, the LANbro. For the past two years, he has been inviting a few of his close friends to act as "honorary LANbros" at his events in order to assist him during judging or to act as the Driver Coach or Driver 2.
I had the honor of attending the NJ State Championship as a LANbro where, in addition to winning every match we played, we became the Winning Alliance Captain and broke 400 points every match. Our matches weren't always an easy win, however. One team, knowing that they would lose their match against 9971 if they played fair, decided that the best way to potentially win the match would be to attempt to destroy LANbros' robot. They ruthlessly used their robot to ram into 9971's until they damaged it to the point that it couldn't score. We still won the match, but the robot endured a considerable amount of damage. The refs didn't allow us to extra time to fix the robot before our next match, so we scrambled to put it together in the few minutes we were allotted. Eventually, with the help of one of our alliance picks, 9971 fixed the robot by soldering one of the servo wires back together. This was the first time any of us had to solder parts of a robot together in between matches--a crowd had gathered around us to take pictures and videos of us putting it together and testing it; it was an incredibly inspiring moment. Even after this moment, LANbros qualified for worlds.
HACKPHS: MY FIRST HACKATHON
November 03, 2018
A #BUILTBYGIRLS friend reached out to the slack group and informed us about a hackathon she was planning at Princeton High School. Intrigued, I gathered a group of school friends who had programming experience and we all registered for the two-day event. Our first day was quite relaxed. We built a car racing video game similar to one that a team member had built for his TSA video game challenge. Towards the end of the day, we decided to take the project a step further--we wanted to implement CV and the Google API's Voice Recognition abilities. We wrapped up our first day excited to get started on the CV and speech recognition the next day.
Our second day was more intense. We originally split up into two groups--one for CV, and one for the speech recognition. I was in charge of working with the Google API. Halfway through our second day, we came to the realization that the API was far more complicated than we had originally anticipated and abandoned the project. Instead, the team focused on perfecting our CV code to reduce noise and accurately recognize the number of fingers we were holding up; the number of fingers we held up would correlate to a different action for the car (ex: two fingers meant moving forward). We finished our program with just minutes to spare! The vision worked most of the time; we thought this was pretty good for CV that we had fine-tuned in just ~5 hours. Although we didn't win the hackathon, I learned a lot and plan on attending more hackathons in the future.
NJ CONFERENCE FOR WOMEN
October 26, 2018
Mr. Doug Clayton, an SVP at SES, invited Anjali and me to the NJ Conference for Women. We were ecstatic! Not only were we able to meet our employers, and co-workers, we were also able to spend the day listening to speeches from Candy Chang, a world-renowned artist and urban designer; Patrice Banks, CEO of the Girls Auto Clinic; and Liza Tanzer, president of Life is Good. Not only this, we had the opportunity to attend multiple workshops about branding ourselves and changing the way we lead in the workplace. It was an eye-opening experience. I had the chance to speak with Ms. Banks after her speech--she's as cool in person as she is on stage! I hope to one day inspire a wave of change-makers the way she has.
MY FIRST #BUILTBYGIRLS WAVE SESSION
October 23, 2018
My first #BUILTBYGIRLS match didn't work out (the first advisor never got back to me about the first session), so #BUILTBYGIRLS quickly found me a new wave advisor! My advisor is a Columbia graduate and a back-end developer at Amazon. She had originally majored in Economics and Political Sciences but decided to work as a software developer at a startup in CA. The startup was acquired by Amazon, and now she works closely with Amazon's Alexa. We asked each other about our interests, and I asked her about her high school and college experiences. She hadn't heard of FIRST robotics, so I explained the program to her. She offered to guide me through the process of linking Alexa Skills to our Driver Station. I was really excited to do this until I realized that this was likely against the rules of FTC. Still, I am very interested in learning more about Alexa Skills and would like to implement it in one of my future projects. I am looking forward to our future sessions!