- 2022 Contributors -
As Cornell students, we are incredibly privileged and tend to neglect our surrounding community. I plan to use the money from the Contribution project to make a small contribution for the homeless population in taking steps towards a better life. As of now, I plan to get a meal with a homeless person to get to know them and then have a designated amount of money to give them towards whatever they need most. Meals are a wonderful time to connect with others and to me, listening to, connecting, and beginning to understand others is the first step towards better lives and a better world. I know that this won’t cure homelessness nor the world, but I think doing this, and possibly sharing it for the Cornell or local community, will be very impactful and empowering for both myself and those I meet.
My idea for a contribution is an app that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help every college student find the best roommate for them. The people that you live with can make your college experience much better or much worse. My goal is to help everyone make their time in college the best it can be.
My project is to program movie screening events through the Asian American Studies Program located at 420 Rockefeller to foster a greater sense of belonging, community, and refuge from the academic realm. Since working at AASP, I have grown to see what this place means for students both physically and mentally and would like to use this opportunity to contribute back to the same place that feels like a home away from home. In choosing films that are culturally relevant and symbolically meaningful, I seek to engage students through reflective discussions about the film and how it relates to our everyday lives.
The Narrative is a podcast and social media platform dedicated to building the foundation for an authentic future by highlighting community leaders and well-known personalities ready to speak their truth. Since its debut in October 2020, podcast host Jahnay has interviewed top personalities including Issa Rae. The Narrative reminds us that no matter how much status we acquire, we will always be faced with real world issues related to our lives, our family, and our sense of self. This semester, The Narrative is hosted live to encourage Cornellians to build authentic relationships and have conversations about who they truly are. Follow The Narrative on Instagram (@thee.narrative) for updates regarding live podcast episodes!
State of the Pod is a podcast production group on campus that aims to create high-quality podcasts covering emerging issues in science, technology, and society. Our production process involves researching a topic, conducting interviews, audio editing and scripting, and then publishing. With this, students learn valuable research, writing, and media skills while contributing to the education of their communities! We hope to expand the reach of our podcasts and improve their overall production quality with this new funding. Additionally, we want to revamp our podcast education program with Ithaca high school students from STEP (Science and Technology Education Program).
EthosSphere is an online haircare retailer, marketplace and research center dedicated to people with textured hair and their multidimensional needs.
I find that keeping doing something regularly, such as preparing for GRE every day, is difficult. I hope to make an application with game elements, so that after users create tasks and complete them, they would be rewarded in the game, like earning resources, and therefore more willing to persist. The progress of the game will only depend on whether you managed to do tasks on a regular basis or not. Scientific models of building habits will also be implemented in this application. Examples of the game may include developing a character, an organization or anything that’s a good fit.
The goal of this project is to design and construct a machine that takes plastic waste and converts it to 3D printer filament usable in desktop printers around the world. Some of these devices currently exist, but they can cost upwards of ten times the price of the printers. A basic filament recycler should include a grinder break down plastic and an extruder to produce filament. This contribution would help reduce plastic waste in the world, possibly allowing for recycling of local plastics and allowing hobbyists to continue printing while decreasing their environmental impact.
Bluebird Project: The aim of this project is to create and install several birdhouses designed for eastern bluebirds around our Ithaca community. The main goal is to foster an appreciation of nature by encouraging this striking species to inhabit our community. By being reminded of the beauty of nature, our community will feel encouraged to promote other sustainable actions. Another positive impact of this project is supporting bluebird populations which have been seriously impacted by an increasingly developed geographical region. The scope will focus solely on installations within the Ithaca community.
As a student worker at Martha’s Cafe, I have noticed much food goes to waste. Every Friday, Martha’s throws out any unsold pre-packaged food. This includes sushi, poke bowls, bottled drinks, sandwiches, wrapped fruit, and bakery goods, all of which are in perfectly good condition to eat. If this happens at just one eatery on campus, imagine the amount of waste that occurs across all dining units! Concerned, I seek to reduce food waste and address food insecurity on campus by establishing a program that freely redistributes traditionally-wasted pre-packaged food from all eateries to students facing food insecurity.
Contribution Project funds will assist us in purchasing books from Odyssey Bookstore, an Ithaca small business that highlights local authors and builds community around conversation. These books will be donated to the Family Reading Partnership, an Ithaca non-profit connecting families with young children to the joy of books. We have found that education is the best gift one can receive to ensure a future of success and in organizing this project, we hope to uplift our personal mission of encouraging literacy and educational experiences for a better tomorrow.
This project is driven by a desire to learn and share stories centered around development. Through interviews with students about their experience with development, from witnessing a development project in their hometown, conducting field work during an internship, to raising funds for a development organization as its student chapter, I hope to gather a wide range of perspectives to build an understanding of development made up of diverse individual experiences. I believe that there is much we can learn from each other as a community and hope to make it a start to understanding others’ backgrounds, interests, motivations and goals from the angle of development.
For my contribution project, I plan to use the funds to brighten people’s days! I will do this by purchasing coffee and snacks for students to give them some much-needed brainpower for studying and exams. Cornell can be a very challenging place – in academic, emotional, and social definitions. My project aims to lighten this load for students whenever possible. I hope to travel to different hubs for all colleges, like Martha’s for Human Ecology students and Duffield for Engineering students. This way, the effects of my project can hopefully span a large population of Cornell students.
This can be a stressful time for students balancing large academic workloads with attempts to further professional development. This contribution aims to encourage these hardworking students by providing them with pick-me-ups and other simple but useful gifts, in the hopes of lifting their spirits and adding an extra bit of joy to their busy days as they continue with their career search and their on-campus studies.
In American society, it is customary to assign incarcerated people to a lifetime of blame and condemnation for mistakes made in their past. Underneath the label of criminal, however, lies a person who society has all but forgotten and labeled a pariah, with the incorrect notion that those who spend time in prison are inherently bad people. Cornell Parole Preparation Project seeks to rectify these notions by partnering incarcerated individuals in prisons with trained Cornell students who guide clients through the arduous and emotional parole preparation process. The organization has a growing team of 20 devoted members working with seven individuals sentenced to life in prison, building meaningful relationships and advocating for their freedom throughout the parole process. Volunteers in our organization are partnered with incarcerated individuals nine months before their parole hearing, spending that period of time focusing on three major areas: relationship building, creation of the parole packet, and interview preparation. The extensive preparation we conduct is essential in incarcerated individuals’ success in front of the parole commissioners who base the near entirety of their decision to release an applicant on the interview and parole packet that our organization helps to prepare.
Firefighters are exposed to harmful carcinogens in hazardous fire scenes and can bring them back to the station where others can be exposed. The Cayuga Heights Fire Department is an all-volunteer organization, serving the district of Cayuga Heights and the surrounding community. To support the health and safety of these firefighters, I would like to purchase an air purifier and an air filter to be installed in the station and filter out these carcinogens.
Every year, 340,000 students around the world are enrolled in the IBDP program – an internationally-recognized, rigorous curriculum. However, there is a significant disparity in the quality of education offered. The most high-achieving students often attend private, international schools and have the financial means to pay for elite tutoring services and resources. Meanwhile, students in lower-income communities are excluded, in schools which often fail to effectively provide the IB curriculum. IBlieve is the largest student-led initiative on a mission to close this gap, by offering free resources and mentorship from top-scoring IB graduates to equalize opportunities for all to succeed.
Research has shown that pride in one’s environment is one of the top motivators for pro-environmental behavior. This project aims to heighten environmental awareness by painting murals of vulnerable species around Ithaca. By bringing some rarely seen species into the spotlight, I hope to increase the pride people feel about the environment they live in. Personal choices are no substitute for systemic change, but repairing the relationship between humans and their environment is an important step towards mitigating climate crisis.
Smak is a group sharing app aimed to simulate conversation and the sharing of pictures and videos between friends through anonymity.
Tennis players find it very difficult to get good feedback on videos of their play from their in-person coaches. Our Platform facilitates cohesive player-coach interactions, by allowing Coaches to give in-depth tennis advice to their students rapidly. Check out our website for progress at: MyAce.Ai.
I chose my project just like I do everything else–by being really lost. My moment of absent-mindedness inspired me to think of how I could help others with those moments of feeling misguided or lost. I thought of the period of my life when I could barely tie my shoes–senior year of high school! To help others with their confusedness in high school, I decided my contribution would be most meaningful through seminars on the college application process. With this award I can travel and feed those lost 18 year olds pizza and tell them about applying to college!
Oatful is UAE’s first overnight oats mix packed with 20+grams of protein, superfoods, and fiber. We exist to create the healthiest breakfast without compromising on health, convenience, or decadence. Our aim is to help people commit to habits and maximize their potential. Own your morning, own your day, own your life.
In an effort to connect our services more easily with the community at large we have created a credit card-like info card that will be distributed at both of our locations and all outreach events. Once the QR code is scanned, people will be directed to our website where they can find out more about our centers and schedule an appointment.
My idea for contribution regards supporting campus sexual health by readily providing educational materials and access to condoms,etc. more widely across the Cornell campus. In the fall, I partnered with an organization to advocate for sexual health among youth and distributed hundreds of condoms. This made me realize how greatly our campus and its students need access to supplies for safe sex. With this contribution I hope to also provide education and resources for the queer community as well, and work to make sure everyone is represented in my materials and education.
HEAL is a project providing culturally-adapted emotional support service to Asian international students at Cornell and other universities in the States. Our service is free and peer-led. Having launched in 2020 after seeing increased mental health needs during the pandemic among the international student community, we have conducted over 200 sessions to this day. We are super excited about using the Contribution Project funding to make HEAL better and more accessible to students around Cornell and in other universities!
Our project aims to increase cultural understanding and awareness among elementary school students by teaching about different cultures in a fun and interactive way. We will be partnering with local elementary schools in Ithaca and leading cultural activities and games for the students there, with each session being dedicated to a different country’s culture. Each session will be dedicated to a specific country. Some examples of possible activities that we would do with the children include: playing the game ddakjji and making kimbap for South Korea, teaching samba dance for Brazil, making yo-yos for Philippines, origami for Japan, and teaching yoga for India.
Eco House is for undergrads interested in environmental justice. Justice work is tiring, so we’re seeking new resources to allow each person to be proactive in maintaining positive mental health, and we want to provide in-hand resources for reactive needs too. Our peers deserve to not only feel validation of feelings/experiences but also have a wealth of options for actionable, impactful tasks. CAPS only has so many appointments, and we know students need more support – the Contribution Grant allows us to buy PASS Mental Health Kits to put support directly in their hands and make a difference in their lives!
My research project is to understand how people’s psychological mechanism affects the spread of fake news on the Internet. To do this, I can simulate a social media environment. By building a new application, participants simulated the process of identifying fake news on social media. And using that environment, I can also set up a control group, and look at differences in people’s behavior by controlling for whether they know the news is fake. After that, I can also use the interview method to understand the feelings of participants and determine what psychological mechanism plays a role in this process. After getting financial support, I can use the money to help me build this simulation environment. I can use the contribution project funds to rent the server and request technical support to help me set up the simulation environment to facilitate the project and research.
Raised Bed Garden The bed will be roughly 10 feet long by 4 feet wide by 3 feet tall. The bed will be constructed of treated wood and corrugated galvanized steel roof panels. The top edges of the bed will be lined with 1 by 4” planks of wood. The bottom of the bed will have chicken wire, then recycled cardboard and newspaper. Next will be sticks, branches and leaf litter. The rest will be filled with compost, topsoil, and raised bed soil mix. The bed will be planted with herbs, flowers, and some vegetables.
I plan to continue building on a project with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s NYC branch, Harvest NY, to develop a Virtual Reality (VR) platform for many of the major urban farms and community gardens around the city to better understand and support urban growers’ needs. The platform aims to enhance the reach of farm educational programming, including increasing the efficiency of carrying out volunteer training, while also allowing residents that may have previously lacked transportation and time the capacity to visit the farms. The platforms will also increase the visibility of the value of urban agriculture for many low-income, marginalized communities by allowing policymakers, who are often far removed from local issues, to virtually visit these farms.
Tree Swings: Swings help people relieve stress, feel energized, and have childlike curiosity. They would greatly enhance the wellbeing of Cornellians by making the campus a more playful and active space. Currently, there is just one obvious play installation on campus, which is the arrangement of “seat-saws” on the Arts Quad. This has been incredibly successful in promoting playful interaction and conversations. If more play installations existed around campus, underutilized spaces could become livelier and more meaningful to students. These swings could also encourage more students to actively design the campus, and for Cornell to consider creative proposals from students.
My project will focus on addressing medical misinformation and improvisation of communication. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen on a local and national level the harm that health misinformation can cause. One of the issues the Ithaca Free Clinic faces as an organization that primarily serves disenfranchised populations is the dissemination of news and information. My project aims to not only understand which populations we are not reaching but understand how to effectively communicate with them.
Yoomi is an AI-driven physical therapy platform that uses computer vision to provide patients with real-time feedback on their exercise form at home, and provides healthcare professionals with home exercise data and insights to optimize treatment. Using Yoomi, healthcare professionals can create tailored workouts for patients, and adjust a workout’s sets, reps, required range of motion, speed, and patient posture with Yoomi’s flexible computer vision technology. During gamified workouts in front of a phone or laptop camera, patients receive feedback on their form, and are warned when performing dangerous movements that may result in further injury.
The Big Red Adaptive Play and Design Initiative is a project dedicated to reverse engineering battery-operated toys and devices to make them more accessible to individuals with motor impairments in the Ithaca area. We are a new student organization on campus and our overall goal is to make assistive technologies more readily available to the people in need of them. In this endeavor, we hope to bridge the gap between Cornell University students and the Ithaca Special Needs community.
The WWWA is an NGO that serves refugee women. The pandemic ostensibly amplified the organizational inequalities: such as insufficient funding, scarcity of resources, and the most difficult, the inability to interact with clients due to COVID 19. In collaboration with the WWWA, I created a facilitation guide to encourage social change. This facilitation guide attempts to mediate this issue by allowing ambitious community members to have the agency to be leaders in their community instead of having reliance on the WWWA to facilitate insightful discussions. I envision this facilitation guide being the catalyst to social change in marginalized communities ushering the revolutionary wave of change that lives within the beings of ambitious social actors. With the funds from the contributions fund, I aim to create physical copies of the guide and to bring in a team of translators who can assist in the efforts in distributing the guide to a diverse audience.
Communicating Morocco to the Cornell Community! Afritrip Morocco is a Cornell Startup Travel Company that provides fully private & customized trips to Morocco. Through the contribution project, my objective is to communicate the beauty of Morocco and the Moroccan culture & history to the Cornell Community with an objective for the Cornell community to learn more about Morocco and would be interested in visiting Morocco in the future. To reach a big number of students, the communication will be made mainly through social media: Instagram, Snapchat, & Tiktok!
My project as part of the Contribution Project is “CardioVigi,” a biomedical device idea capable of rapidly detecting a cardiovascular event. After losing my grandfather to an unexpected heart attack during the Fall 2021 semester, I realized the gaps in the patient journey from the onset of a cardiovascular event to receiving care. Combining my knowledge of biology, my passion for technology, and dedication to my grandfather’s legacy, I imagined CardioVigi. Looking forward, I intend to refine CardioVigi to ensure it is a viable, life-saving solution for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who die due to cardiovascular disease each year.
My project will utilize the financial grant to purchase art supplies. I will use these to create original artwork for anyone needing their day brightened. The project will range from customized paintings on canvas for homebound seniors to hand-painted journals or canvass bags for foster kids. There are no predetermined recipients of these unique, creative pieces. The point of the project is to spread joy and inspiration through art.
Mechanobiology is a new field focused on role of mechanical force and fluid pressure on molecules, cells, and organisms. Most people cannot identify the difference between mechanobiology and biomechanics, which is mainly the study of the body’s ability to generate movement. To introduce the fields, my contribution project is website and blog that gives a student-level introduction to mechanobiology, giving examples of force in nature, medicine, and space bioscience, discussing materials in the body, such as bone, and showing rapid adaptation to force and slow development in response. Features include interactive 3D simulations, graphics, and diagrams that explains important concepts.
My experience navigating food insecurity at Cornell made me aware of the existing gap in our campus in supporting low-income students to access their basic needs. I joined the Office of Student Advocate (OSA) on campus as a student leader and used the network of the Office to develop SNAP support at Cornell. Working with OSA, my team implemented two information sessions and was able to successfully help over 100 students apply for food assistance. Our team is currently working with Anabel Groceries to create a paid student position to run the SNAP outreach long-term. In addition, we’re in the process of re-envisioning the library in the basement of Anabel Taylor Hall to create a basic-needs center.
Fantasy Premier League provides a unique opportunity for understanding machine learning: we can either take advantage of the stock market structure of the game to make player purchases and sales, or we can use “market data” about player and team performance. My project aims to compare the two approaches with the aim of gaining a greater understanding of how we should treat the stock market.
My project idea will provide women suffering from constant menstrual cramps with a non-medicative and more sustainable solution to directly mitigate the same hormonal imbalance that cause their period pain. Through this outlet, I strive to liberate women to acknowledge their physiological symptoms and thus take agency over their own bodies.
I plan on using my money to buy supplies to work on my art projects that I am going to donate to hospitals. I hope to inspire patients by sharing my story and showing them how they can express their emotions through art.
Through the contribution project, we will commission additional Filipino folk songs and expand our repertoire to be more inclusive and representative of the Philippines’ truly diverse and beautiful range of cultures. This project is so important to me and the Filipino community because it is actively supporting our mission to preserve the Filipino Rondalla as well as our mission to educate the Ithaca community and Filipino community on this tradition that we hold dear. It is important that our repertoire be diverse so that ALL Filipinos can feel represented by our organization.
I will use the funding to contribute to a greater quality of holistic health care in rural and tribal areas. I will be working with the parent organization SYVM, a leading non-profit centered in Karnataka, India who provide preventive, curative, and rehabilitative health services to local communities. If selected, this funding can cover the cost of medical care for 20 tribal patients, 2 days of visit by a mobile health unit to a Tribal village, or palliative medical costs for an entire year for 2 patients.
The project is intended to celebrate the first-generation student experience at Cornell. I want to host an event where first-generation students feel appreciated and celebrated on campus. This would be facilitated through my network and board position on the First Generation Student Union. We would have many prizes and goodies that can serve as memorabilia that students can take with them post-grad.
My project aims to support low-income students in Ethiopia by providing access to various educational resources and training. Students will be able to gain the opportunity to receive mentorship, connect with other students within their community, and utilize different educational tools. My mission is to provide an equitable educational place that focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation for senior students in high school and college students.
The College and Career Readiness Initiative (CCRI) fosters relationships between first-generation, low-income (FGLI) high school students and FGLI Cornell undergraduate mentors to address some of the obstacles faced by FGLI students. FGLI students experience many challenges when they pursue higher education or enter the workforce compared to their peers with college-educated parents, including challenges related to college and career readiness. I will support the development of opportunities to support FGLI students to realize their academic and professional goals by developing and delivering a virtual webinar for our partner high school on navigating the college application process.
Agcess is an SMS data tracking tool for agriculture. We provide a seamless way to digitize and revolutionize recordkeeping for smallholder farmers in an accessible way.