

Kevin Kapadia and Ani Ramesh, SENTRY student researchers and Student Leadership Council (SLC) members, gained valuable experience this summer. Kevin participated in the Department of Homeland Security’s HS-POWER Program, while Ani engaged in the Dorm Room Fund’s PhD Founder track and an internship at Dow Chemical Company. Read on to learn more about their summer accomplishments.
Kevin Kapadia, a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California and SENTRY research assistant for the Advanced Sensing Technology and Risk Assessment, Prediction and Deterrence research areas, recently completed a 10-week internship through the Department of Homeland Security’s Professional Opportunities for Student Workforce to Experience Research (HS-POWER) Program. The program aims to foster lasting relationships between students, researchers, DHS personnel, and research facilities that will ultimately cultivate the next generation of educated and skilled STEM professionals.
During the internship, Kevin collaborated with Argonne National Laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Sean Warnick to establish a definition of “security” for distributed algorithmic decision processes. Essentially, this involved defining a secure system for situations such as voting for political leaders, choosing a movie to watch with friends, or sensors in a network determining if an object in the sky poses a threat. Kevin’s specific contribution was analyzing how three factors affected the outcome of six voting algorithms.
Similarly, Ani Ramesh, a PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, worked on the technology commercialization of SENTRY’s End-to-End Graph-Agnostic Real-Time Evacuation Routing to Protect Soft Targets During Active-Shooter Scenarios research with the project’s Principal Investigator, Subhadeep Chakraborty and Transition Team Co-lead, Isaac Maya.
Ani also participated in the PhD Founder Track summer program with Dorm Room Fund, designed for PhD students interested in commercializing their research. This program provides insights into the startup ecosystem, fundraising, due diligence, team building, and rapid growth. Ani presented a mock pitch for his SENTRY project spinoff and received valuable feedback from real investors.
Additionally, Ani took part in the highly selective ADISE (Advanced Digital Internship for Scientists and Engineers) internship program for PhD students at the Dow Chemical Company this summer. During his internship, he worked with the robotics team using high-throughput experimentation and end-to-end automation. He also engaged with Fortune 100 executives, to whom he gave a presentation on his graduate research with SENTRY.
Kevin and Ani gained valuable hands-on experience that will enhance their ability to contribute to SENTRY’s ongoing research and advance their academic goals and aspirations.
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