Saara Piplani

One of two US liaisons for a company with users across 70 countries. Currently working on AI project for users

Journalism internship with LA Times. Hear guest lecturers and have opportunities to create podcasts about LAUSD Cellphone ban, among others. Get to write features as well, some opportunities include covering Ryan Reynolds' Underdogs, Nat Geo's documentary Ocean with David Attenborough, Hollywood red carpet events, etc.

Promoted to Co-Chair of the WRRF committee. Manage WRRF team, interview new members, organize conference, and work to set up workshops within the event, including collaborating with speakers and outreaching to 120+ robotics teams, organizations, in addition to community outreach. Set up event & booked location at SCU, with 159 participants & volunteers, 33 speakers, and 27 workshops, including an industry panel with several companies, spread across 7 rooms with an 8-5 session schedule and a 7:00am set up. Likewise for the following year at Notre Dame, with speakers and lectures ranging from NVIDIA to FIRST specialists

The WRRF Conference, started in 2003, is a networking robotics event for middle & high school students across Northern California formed in 2003 as a California Nonprofit Corporation with 501(c)(3) status. Our team works together to arrange and create knowledgeable programs and learning experiences, while networking and expanding. Through a selective interview process, I became a committee member. I work to manage aspects of the program, bringing new ideas, outreaching to instructors, marketing, media designing, volunteer coordination, etc. Am in the programming department for website development.

Selected as Programming Lead in 10th grade during yearly elections. Was only sophomore approved to run for team captain, and only sophomore in otherwise all-senior Operations Director election. Help manage programming team, whose students are majority of 50 member team. Work mainly on programming autonomous routines, but contribute to other areas as well. Made 972's auto routines and taught/managed the first years in my section. Had up to a five piece in FIRST robotics competitions

Was selected as Software Director in yearly elections over several candidates, some of whom are seniors. Still acting as Auto Lead until they find suitable replacement. As Software Director, will manage and run the software team + leads, the biggest on 972, by planning, making, & teaching curriculum, setting up activities, and organizing/working on software projects such as Vision, Auto, Cascading Elevator code, etc. Will review pull requests of others and work directly with captains, hardware director, and mentors as part of the Curriculum Council, the group of five that runs the team.

Selected by the team directors and captains as Technician and Pit Programmer as sophomore (previous technicians were always seniors). Technician is given to advanced programmers with basic electrical skills who diagnose issues on the fly. As pit programmer, work with auto, data logs, and learn about arm/shooter code as help troubleshoot problems with other pit programmers, all upperclassman.

50 students are selected every year, out of 90+ applicants. Joined team as freshman (one of 5) helped program teleop, swerve drive, auto commands + routines, characterize odometry, tune PIDs with Java. Started working with Vision using limelight, Raspberry Pi, B-Link, etc. - Featured in NPR News. World Championship Semifinalists Archimedes Division Winners

For our preseason competition, we participated in CHEZY Champs, where I was selected as technician

Selected to be Creative Writing Editor of The Wildcat Review. Go over fiction submissions of the literary magazine and edit before we publish. For Vice Editor-in-Chief, help get the magazine published and logistical work for setting everything up and running meetings with the editor in chief.

Learned python applications in journalism, personally got to use APIs to data scrape from Stanford website and write an article about AI enrollment trends over five years, as well as learn the format for their code. Wrote 7 articles total, several published, including interviewing olympians, vice provosts, students and their breakthroughs, Jones' Lecturers, etc. Attended talks from professors and other guest lecturers about AI in data scraping and journalism in several fields.

For several months, I worked with a team of computer science alumni from Harvard, Stanford and MIT on a FinTech AI project predicting stock market movements using Twitter data from GameStop. Under their mentorship, others and I programmed in Python, and used a logistic regression model to create an NLP program with 85.5% accuracy

Went to Flex for a job shadow, got to do a challenge with mini-robots, tour and learn about their labs, and learn more about the design and creation process.

Clubs: AI Competition Club (President), Wildcat Review Club (Creative Writing Editor, VP), GirlsWhoCode Club (President), Coding Honor Society (VP), Cats HW Help (Secretary) Society of Women Engineers Club (Secretary), Tap Core Volunteering (Outreach Head), Stock Market Club Teams: 972 Iron Claw Robotics (lead), Basketball, Tennis