In the “new normal” faced by students this semester, virtual communication has become more important than ever. A few QUESTees are tackling this issue through their leadership on the launch team for Dive Chat, a new group-messaging system that hit the App Store in August. I had the opportunity to speak with Aaliya Husain (Cohort 35), Jules Parra (Cohort 35), and Ishaan Kapur (Cohort 36) about their experience with Dive.

Dive Chat is a new student-run startup that leverages group chats through organized channel messaging and events. As one of ten launch teams at universities across the country, the Dive launch team at UMD has been hard at work building their team, hosting virtual social events, and developing a mentor program for freshmen. 

Aaliya started working with Dive when a recruiter reached out to her via LinkedIn this July. She resonated with Dive’s mission and culture, so she agreed to serve as UMD’s Launch Campus Manager for the summer. “Since Dive is a completely student-run startup, you get to see all aspects of the app: the development, the business side, and the tech side. Everyone is always willing to help with professional questions or random everyday questions,” Aaliya said.

After being messaged by the recruiter and learning that Aaliya had already joined, Jules joined the summer team as Assistant Campus Manager. Jules is interested in a career in technology and thought it would be a valuable experience to work on a startup’s launch team with other UMD students. Ishaan joined the launch team as a Recruiting Manager for similar reasons, saying he was excited when he “learned that it’s this cool new app and actually believed it could go somewhere.”

Since the app’s launch last month, UMD’s team has focused on engaging in the campus community. Aaliya said the team has been getting to know each other virtually. “What I love about our team is everyone is so nice, and I wouldn’t have met all of these people if it weren’t for Dive. We have fun socials too just to get to know each other.” Dive has also instituted a mentorship program for incoming freshmen with virtual social mixers. “It’s not just about the app, but community-building as well,” Aaliya said.

After organizing strategy for the internal teams over the summer, Jules is looking forward to keeping up with her network and maintaining the friendships she made through Dive. Ishaan is continuing his role with Dive’s recruiting this fall, and he feels excited to continue challenging his communication and teamwork skills. Aaliya decided to switch to a brand strategy role in order to learn more about brainstorming, design thinking, and content creation.

Working with Dive’s launch team has been an influential experience for these QUESTees to grow professionally. Aaliya reflected, “Everyone on the team is very active and their belief in the product is insane. Everyone has a deep-rooted belief that this is great, and that makes everyone want to work harder.”

Do you want to learn more about Dive Chat? Visit https://dive.chat/

I don’t know about you, but for the first time in a while, it almost feels like I have a little extra time on my hands since I’ve been away from the daily hustle of campus life. Whether it’s catching up on classes, spending time with family, or diving into those personal passion projects (doctors are reporting alliteration is a symptom of productivity), everyone has been finding new ways to use their spare time. Luckily for me, I had the chance to see what three current QUEST students have been up to over the last of couple weeks since we left campus! 

Adam Sarsony | Cohort 29 | Rockville, MD

All is well in the Sarsony house, where early in the mornings, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse–at least on the weekends. Adam is home in Rockville with his sister, who studies education in North Carolina, and his parents. It’s not unusual to walk into a simulated class, where his sister may or may not be recording a class session analyzing Laura Numeroff’s American classic, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, in English or Spanish. 

As for his classes, his machine learning and business courses are tying in well to his projects, particularly his research with Dr. Purtilo of the Quality Guild, investigating how digital tools can be better used to make in-person all meetings more effective. Here, he partakes in week-long design sprints leading up to Friday presentations on his project, related to the live presentation feedback tool some QUEST students may have used in their 190H courses.  This tool allows users–presenters–to receive active feedback on their technical presentations so they can better understand audience understanding and attention. What better way than to ask them, right?

Work without play does not make a fun day, and Adam’s research hasn’t been his only personal interest. He’s actually rebuilt his personal website into a bit of a game using React. Check out Adam’s website here and some resources he shared to get started with your own site: 

• humans.fyi: A collection of personal websites people have shared for inspiration
• AWS Amplify : An easy platform to host your first site on, with a start-up guide using React here

Sam Pearlstein | Cohort 31 | Danville, CA

Even though some QUEST students might be ready to call it a night near College Park, the sun’s still shining bright in the Golden State, and Sam Pearlstein is still making the most of every day! Her days start with meetings staying on top of everything QUEST and end with plenty of time with her family now that she’s home. 

Sam was sure to voice how much she misses everyone in the QUEST Program, but luckily, she has still been able to stay involved while away from campus. She and her team are hard at work on their 490H project with their client Intralox, where they’re working with the conveyor belt manufacturer to analyze the use of Smartsheet, a data collection software. 490H is just one color on Sam’s palette of QUEST opportunities, as well–she’s also very involved with QUEST Recruiting and is serving as a mentor! As part of mentors class, she is co-leading a new effort to consolidate all of the current QUEST resources into one, easy-to-use platform: the QUEST Intranet! Be sure to check out the Facebook group to share your thoughts in a recent survey regarding the project’s development as well.

Out of the classroom, Sam’s been enjoying the time with her family and getting back to training for a half marathon, taking advantage of the sunny days to enjoy the fresh air on her runs. When she gets home to refuel, her and mom break open the recipe books and get cooking with Bon Appetit, where she’s discovered the perfect tostada recipe, which she highly recommends you try yourself.

Ayo Awobajo | Cohort 33 | Bowie, MD

They say work doesn’t feel like work when you’re doing what you love and back in Bowie, Maryland, Ayo Awobajo is doing exactly what he loves regardless of the circumstances, noting: “Although these are unprecedented times, there’s strength to be found. Reach out to someone, learn a new skill, do good work as we push through this as a community.”

He truly turns his words to work, digging deep into professional development and creativity at every chance he gets. Before he jumps into a business analyst internship with Tradeweb, a New York-based e-trade support platform, he’ll be spending the rest of his spring semester learning from mentors in externships with both J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Through these opportunities, he’s had the chance to see the day-to-day operations behind each company with a valuable emphasis on professionalism, and he’s sure to be Wall-Street ready in no time at all!

When he isn’t learning about the business world, he sets his sights to diving into it–Ayo actually started his own brand, Faith Love Optimism–the FLO, for short–this past November, a project nearly a year in the making. The uplifting lifestyle brand brings faith and joy to contemporary design, and now, he’s letting his creativity flo(w) as he prepares to launch a fresh series of designs in his Season 2 releases! Check out the start to his awesome clothing line on Instagram, and be sure to drop a follow for updates on their newest installments to the collection!

Our world has experienced nothing short of a technological revolution throughout the last century. We have refrigerators that can store and extend the shelf life of food, new modes of transportation that can carry us across the world in a day, robots and drones that can exceed human capabilities, and phones that let us access almost all the knowledge in the world with a few clicks. The list of technological marvels only continues to grow as we learn new skills and discover new information. If you were tasked with identifying the different types of engineers who developed these technologies, you might think of mechanical, electrical, civil, or maybe even software engineers. However, there is one field of engineering that is critical for the success of others, but is often overlooked. Materials scientists and engineers have played key roles in all of these projects, however, many people are completely unaware of what materials engineers do, or even that they exist at all!

According to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UMD, “Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) combines engineering, physics and chemistry principles to solve real-world problems associated with nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, energy, manufacturing and other major engineering disciplines.” Essentially, materials engineering is very important to the continuous development of new technologies and materials engineers are crucial members of a tech development team. So, we now know that materials engineers are critical for the success of any project, but the question remains: What is materials engineering?

According to Hadas Elazar-Mittelman, a senior in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and a member of Cohort 30, “Materials engineering is trying to take what we know about chemistry and physics and apply this basic knowledge to manipulate materials to behave in a certain way, meaning to ensure that the material possesses properties needed for whatever the application.” For example, airplanes must withstand high wind pressure, be resistant to large changes in temperature, and be durable to last for the multiple take-offs and landings that happen every day. A materials engineer would use their knowledge about how a material responds to pressure, temperature changes, and prolonged use in order to choose the best material for the plane, or even iterate on previous findings to develop a new material. The skill set a materials engineer possesses is vital, especially in fields like electronics that need very specific material behavior in order for advanced technologies like circuits or sensors to function. Hadas went on to quote one of her professors that materials engineering is the “Rosetta Stone of engineering” because materials engineers can talk to almost any type of engineer or technical professional, functioning as a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ when trying to contribute to an effort. The breadth and depth of the materials engineering field makes the discipline very nuanced yet still accessible to every field in engineering. 

The famous saying “you are what you eat” describes how you are only as healthy as you treat your body; a materials engineering analogy could be “you are what you are made of,” meaning that a technology is only able to be efficient, durable, long-lived, and feasible if it is made from the correct materials. Therefore, just like people need doctors to teach them how to properly treat and maintain their bodies, engineering teams need materials engineers in order to create technologies that can succeed and survive the test of time.

“This may sound a little weird, but have you ever experienced a phantom flush?” When Charles Grody (Q29) first asked me this sophomore year, I actually started to laugh! All I could think of was what in the world is a phantom flush and why is this boy, who I met a week ago, so interested in toilets? Charles, used to this response, explained that a phantom flush is when you go to the bathroom, step into the stall, and then out of nowhere – boom – there’s a flush and –  boom – there’s a flush again! Admitting that this has happened to me on multiple occasions, Charles then proceeded to explain that not only is this annoying, but it also wastes money, and more importantly water! At the time, Charles was in the process of creating an idea of how to fix this design flaw. Fast forward a year and now, I am proud to announce, that Charles has developed Hydraze, a water conservation company that is working to design automatic, single flush toilets.

Charles began developing the first prototype of Hydraze through his Entrepreneurial and Innovation Program (EIP) honors program. Thinking about this phantom flush issue, it occurred to Charles that the system failure laid in the design of an automatic sensor detecting the distance a person stands from the toilet. Instead, he thought, the bathroom latch should have an installed flush sensor. Therefore, whenever you open the latch – boom – the toilet flushes ONCE! With this idea, he began to interview facility managers on campus who advised him that while his idea was fantastic, the only way this device would get approved was if it had the same amount of cleanliness of an automatic sensor and if it had a one-year return on investment. During this time, Charles’ idea began gaining a lot of attraction – and he began winning grants from EIP, the Do Good Institute, and the Office of Sustainability. With this money, Charles built two tools: a latch counter and a flush counter. A latch counter counted how many times the bathroom latch was opened from the inside, hence an expected flush, and the flush counter attached to the automatic sensor and counted how many total times the toilet flushed. By subtracting the expected flushes from the total flushes Charles could count the amount of phantom flushes! Through this, Charles was able to gather the data that each toilet wastes about 7200 gallons and $150 a year – but with more data gathered these numbers are predicted to drastically increase. Already, Charles’ device would cost him less than $150. Knowing this, he applied and was accepted to both the Under Armour Sustainability Challenge and the Do Good Challenge.

At the Under Armour Sustainability Challenge in April, Hydraze was part of 8 out of 64 teams selected to pitch to four senior Under Armour Vice Presidents. Not only this, but Hydraze was also only 1 of 2 undergraduate teams selected for this opportunity. After the conference, an Under Armour VP spoke with Charles about visiting their headquarters and speaking about his idea with others. Similarly, at the Do Good Challenge in April, Hydraze was part of 3 out of approximately 60 teams selected as semifinalists. While every innovative idea at the Do Good Challenge was phenomenal, Charles won first place and raised $5000 for his company, Hydraze!

Charles’ ability to define, analyze, and fix a problem truly demonstrates the qualities that QUEST strives to establish within each one of us. We are so very proud of Charles for his achievements thus far, and look forward to watching Hydraze further develop from a startup into a well-known company.  Congratulations Charles, we have no doubt that you will accomplish and achieve anything you set out to do in the future!