Organs, plastic, and computers
People Watching #1
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People
Adaobi Adibe is working on making all organs regenerate, starting with the kidneys. After studying electrical engineering (and building a few small software startups), she self-taught biology and started working at the Francis Crick Institute (where she created a diagnostic test for autoimmune psychosis). She also writes transparently about learning, serious work, and her journey here.
Chandhana Sathishkumar is working on Plastic List, which runs tests to find out how many plastic chemicals are in the food, drinks, and household items we consume. She’s got many random + impressive anecdotes on her personal website, ranging from setting a Guinness world record to writing a book to doing competitive stand-up-comedy.
Keegan Mcnamara wants to create personal computers that are “beautiful and serene” (as opposed to boring metal rectangles). He spends his days in his workshop crafting custom computers made from wood and endlessly customizable. You can see examples of his work here.
Eric Gilliam explores the history of innovation to understand how we can build better science institutions today. He’s a prolific writer/historian—sharing in-depth analyses of the history of research orgs such as MIT and DARPA. He has big ideas on how research can be done better, and is starting to get them implemented.
Max Krieger is working on making it easier to learn hard things. Delve, his latest tool, is a sort of Chat-GPT-esque interface for rabbit-holing on topics you want to learn about. He’s built a wide range of projects you can explore here.
Rishi Kothari is automating urban planning policy while deferring Waterloo. During high school, he ran the world’s largest hackathon, started and raised for a pet-tech company, guest lectured about compiler theory, and took lots of train rides. Started coding when he was 8.
Dexter Leng is a Singapore-based indie prolific Mac OS app builder. When not in school, he is building Homerow, ProNotes, and others. ProNotes is, perhaps obviously, a professional version of Apple Notes.
Levi Gershon is a mechanical engineer from MIT building CRABI—a fully autonomous marine robotic system designed to conduct in-transit cleaning of marine vessels, which leads to impactful fuel efficiency gains.
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