My most memorable experiences at YYGS – and this was an incredibly difficult choice – had to do with the Simulation Project. Our group’s proposed solution was the culmination of three core principles of YYGS: excellent academics, deep discussions, and interactions between diverse groups of people. In fact, this component was so impactful that we are still working on a similar issue, to this day!
I have been working on a project on the feasibility of SMS as a data channel with two of my fellow YYGS alumni under the wise supervision of Professor Lin Zhong at Yale University’s Department of Computer Science. In fact, this idea was born out of our Simulation Project, where we combined the wealth of knowledge we accumulated at YYGS with our shared love for increasing access to education to propose a solution that fills the education access gap exacerbated by COVID-19. Our strategy involved using artificial intelligence in tandem with SMS. Buoyed by the our instructor’s positive feedback, we decided to continue the project after YYGS ended. Over the last few months, we have further broadened the project’s scope to facilitating communication that enables the sharing of resources in a cost-effective manner. Our research also intends to address some of the concerns of using SMS in such financial settings, while also evaluating its comparative economic advantages. The goal now is to look at specific scenarios where this could be done (perhaps in underprivileged communities and in developed nations).