COVID-19 dashboards

My most recent dashboard presents Maryland's COVID statistics in an accessible and scientifically-accurate form. Instead of focusing on cumulative case counts, this dashboard highlights increasing prevalence of COVID-19; additionally, it adjusts for population, which the official Maryland Department of Health does not. Governor Larry Hogan's communications director, among many others, complemented our work. Almost 3,000 individuals used our dashboard in its first ten days, according to Google Analytics. We gather the data using an R script, and we scripted all of the visuals in D3.js.

My first dashboard was far more complex. Users could display data from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. at the county, zip code, and neighborhood level; users could build their own maps using an intuitive interface; users could see cases at Maryland nursing homes; and users could download all of the data displayed in the dashboard. This dashboard also received praise from Maryland government figures, journalists, and educators. I coded the entire dashboard in Shiny, the interactive package for R. I stopped updating this dashboard once I began work on my newer one; if you would like to see more than the pictures below, please send me an email.

Kiran Sreepada for Congress (TN-07)

I am the Data Team Lead, a web developer, and an intern with Kiran for Congress. I manage a data team of eight; we build smarter phonebanking lists, find key precincts to target, design infographics, and run demographic modeling. I also designed Kiran's website and phonebank for him.

Learn about my involvement with three other policial campaigns as Youth Coordinator, a data analyst, and campaign manager.

Silver Chips

I served as a co-Editor-in-Chief of Silver Chips, Montgomery Blair High School's award-winning print newspaper. I oversaw a $20,000 budget and a staff of 80 students to produce a monthly 20-page (Washington Post-size) newspaper; Silver Chips covers school and local news, prints opinions and an editorial, runs profiles and features, and writes about culture and sports.

The COVID-19 pandemic fell during my tenure as Editor-in-Chief. As part of Silver Chips' expansion into the world of data journalism, I created an interactive dashboard using the R package Shiny, as detailed above.

I also ran our Twitter account during the pandemic. We averaged 10,000 daily views on our tweets and received praise from figures including Mr. Ricci, former Superintendent Josh Starr, journalists, local politicians, and teachers.

Other local journalists noticed our work and interviewed me for their publications. Here's a story from Montgomery County Media, and here's one from Jonna Michelle.

Big data research

I spent 12 weeks during summer 2019 under the mentorship of Professor Quynh Nguyen at the University of Maryland School of Public Health's Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology.

I assisted with Professor Nguyen's research, working with Google Street View and web scraping, and I conducted my own. I wrote a research paper titled "Geotagged Tweets as a Measure of Sexism for Predicting County-Level Health Outcomes," designed a poster, and created a PowerPoint presentation.

COVID-19 tracking map

At the request of Dr. Kate Sugarman, M.D., I designed this interactive tool. First, individuals who have COVID-19 enter where they had visited in the few days before they felt sick. Then, my tool shows those data through a table and an interactive map. I coded the data gathering and visualization in R.

Recognizing that the Washington, D.C. Department of Health was slow to conduct contact tracing, Dr. Sugarman hoped that public sourcing could help. This tool took three days to design, implement, and test. Within a day of launch, citizens and doctors in five other cities asked me to create maps for their communities. I also translated the Washington, D.C. version into Spanish.

The Rice Thresher

I am currently a writer for The Rice Thresher. Read my work here.

The MoCo Show

I was a reporting intern with The MoCo Show, where I wrote social media and website posts about Montgomery County, MD news. I primarily covered COVID-19, but also focused on the Census, local restaurants, education, and politics. Read my work here.

Wake Up To Politics

I have contributed multiple graphics to fellow student journalist Gabe Fleisher's morning newsletter.

Delhivery

I spent summer 2018 as a business intelligence intern at Delhivery, "India's largest and most profitable fulfilment and logistics company for digital commerce and order/waybill tracking." I created actionable dashboards in Tableau and Sisense to improve company metrics. In addition, I wrote a presentation for co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Kapil Bharati; the dashboard on which the presentation focused was later used in a service-improvement competition for the company.

Former campaigns

In my first campaign, I served as Youth Coordinator for Shruti Bhatnagar for Montgomery County Council; in this role, I led a field work team of 50 teenagers. Second, I served as the data analyst for Nancy Floreen for Montgomery County Executive, where I created an interactive field map. Third, I ran Adiba Chowdhury's campaign for Student Member of the Montgomery County Board of Education. Now, I'm a data analyst and web developer for Kiran Sreepada for Congress.

Volunteering

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I signed up for the Maryland Medical Reserve Corps. Through the Corps, I've volunteered at multiple COVID-19 testing sites, instructing both asymptomatic and symptomatic people on how to administer their test. I also volunteered at food drives. In the past, I've volunteered with Meals on Wheels and the Snow Angels, and I've provided technology lessons to elderly neighbors.