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• Engineering Coursework
• GIS (Mapping)
• ICT4D (Developing World)
• Palpable (Media Project)

Engineering Coursework

Current Work

• Civil/Environmental Projects: working on a campus GIS project team
• Soil Mechanics (lecture & lab course): geotechnical calculations and lab tests
• Fluid Mechanics (lecture & course): fluid physics and lab tests
• "Making Things Interactive": programming the Arduino microcontroller

Also, I am a member of CMU's Development Solutions Organization and Engineers without Borders.

Past Work

In a Solid Mechanics lecture+lab course,

• I worked with a team to conduct wood, aluminum, steel, and concrete samples.
• We used the relevant equations for stress, strain, and moment to calculate deformation and yielding points of the materials.

A Computer Applications in Civil and Environmental Engineering course covered:

• Planning software such as ArcGIS and AutoCAD
• Data analysis with MatLab, Mathematica, and Excel

Projects from other courses:

• Collecting traffic data and timing an intersection using Webster's Formula
• Differential Equations and 3D Calculus
• Scheduling and resource management using Microsoft Project

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GIS Projects

Geographic Information Systems - mapping technology adding dimensions to information
My GIS Reading List/Blogroll

Current Work

• A team project making an ArcGIS database of sculptures, new building boundaries, and pipes for campus maintenance.
• Part of volunteer effort writing a disaster response map application. Used by Red Cross and Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan in the Philippines after typhoons. Linked by Google homepage in 3 countries.
• A project for Citizen Science reports and photos from students using the $100 OLPC Laptop to be mapped on Hello Laptop Hello World's website.

Map Activity for $100 Laptop

• Rewrote the Map Activity for speed and collaboration
• Maps can be saved locally, shared between computers, or put on an online map-wiki.
• Downloadable real-life examples of GIS in environmental science, shipping, and emergency response

Screenshot: A downloadable GPS track of a turtle

Maptonomy

Maptonomy combines historical maps and web archives. An example map shows the political map over 7 months in Somalia. When a region is clicked, the application searches Wikipedia, Google News, and YouTube archives for information on that region at the day on the timeline.
On December 1, 2006 a Wikipedia article reads "[The Islamic Courts Union] are in control of the majority of Somalia." By the end of the month the article and map have changed dramatically.

EarthPaint

EarthPaint shows a 3D planned building. Preset views, toggleable roof, and an anti-wandering function allow the user to explore the plan even if they are not familiar with Google Earth. Comments record the user's view and shapes that they add to the map.

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ICT4D

Information and Communication Technologies for Development: putting technology to work in the developing world
My ICT4D Reading List/Blogroll
Global Twitter messages on ICT4D (Twitter takes the place of social networks and blogs in low-bandwidth regions)

One Laptop Per Child ($100 laptop)

OLPC has produced 2 million of the "100-dollar laptops", computers designed for schools and hardened for use anywhere in the world.
Hello Laptop, Hello World runs a pilot program in the Boston area.

• Map Activity: Rewrite
  I ported the activity to the Static Maps API to lower bandwidth. I used the OLPC mesh tools for classes to collaborate on maps.
• SocialCalc: Charts
  Working with programmers in India and Latin America, I added charts, using HTML5 Canvas and Google's Chart API, and provided lesson plans for classes.
• Citizen Science Lessons
  The $100 laptop is equipped with a camera, microphone, and programs to write, graph, and measure. Classes can collect data and write for real scientific experiments depending on volunteer observations.

Question Box

Question Box connects people in Uganda and India with an operator who answers questions with online information. Frequent questions involve market prices for farmers' products, confidential health concerns, and help treating plant diseases.
Recent questions are posted at WorldWantsToKnow.com

I contributed graphs and visualizations of the questions asked, and these were shown at a TED Fellow's presentation. One word cloud was included in The Guardian's technology blog.

I made a heat map visualization for Question Box searches to show topics by region (mapping where certain crops are grown, or detecting an outbreak of bean weevils, perhaps).
Unfortunately, at present there are only two participating towns in Uganda. This application shows what the map could look like in the future.

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Palpable Video

Using YouTube's API and Facebook Connect, I created a mash-up project which adds content and controls to video. In this embedded example, clicking the map controls the video player. Go to the samples page to see several more examples.