SnapTravel Announces Recipients of 2018 OMSCS Fellowship Awards
In May of this year, we announced that SnapTravel would be partnering with the Georgia Institute of Technology’s online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program to create two Fellowships — the SnapTravel Fellowship Awards. This initiative was spearheaded by Henry Shi, our co-founder and CTO, who recently graduated from the program and saw both a need and an opportunity to give back. The program itself is led by a Top 10 school for Computer Science, and can be completed entirely online for less than $8000 USD.
“For me, it’s incredibly important to pay forward my experiences. With a program like OMSCS, we know that fellowships like this are meaningful for students who work and want to pursue their dreams and ambitions, regardless of their unique backgrounds.” — Henry Shi
These Fellowships are the first of their kind, and were created to benefit students who identify as belonging to underrepresented communities in STEM fields, as well as students exhibiting entrepreneurial spirit. The selection committee for these Fellowships consisted of Shi and the SnapTravel team, joined by Natalie Luu. Natalie holds both a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Engineering from Stanford University, and led Admissions at Y Combinator prior to joining VC fund Lightspeed as a Partner. With her strong academic background and experience supporting and now funding world-class startups, Natalie was an obvious partner for SnapTravel to bring onboard.
Without further ado, we would like to announce the recipients of the 2018 SnapTravel Fellowship Awards for OMSCS Students: Rafiya Javed and Yali Ren!
Rafiya Javed
Rafiya Javed is the recipient of the 2018 fellowship for entrepreneurial spirit. This award is designed to, “recognize and reward a student who is pursuing their OMSCS degree while founding their own startup, or pursuing other entrepreneurial activities.”
Javed is the founder of Shout Health, a navigation software that helps healthcare providers direct their patients to community resources and address their social determinants of health. The Georgia Tech Create-X accelerator program provided Javed’s team with the initial funds and guidance to start her company. Prior to launching her startup and enrolling in the OMSCS program, Javed completed both her undergraduate degree in Physics and her M.D. medical degree.
Shout Health is now performing a pilot study, jointly funded by the American Academy of Pediatrics, taking place at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Javed is optimistic that this proof-of-concept will help her team tackle enormous public health issues in ways that are beneficial to both patients and the providers that care for them.
Yali Ren
Yali Ren is the recipient of the 2018 fellowship for underrepresented students in STEM. This award is designed to, “recognize and reward a student who is pursuing their OMSCS degree and identifies as a member of an underrepresented group in STEM; namely one who identified as a women, non-binary, Indigenous, Black, Hispanic and/or Latinx.”
Ren has a background in civil engineering and has studied in both China and the United States at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Through her work as a research scientist, Ren has made great advances in the reliability engineering field, writing 2 publications all while raising a family and maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She aspires to become a university professor and through her work in OMSCS she hopes to “move forward without any fear — no matter what happens.”
To learn more about SnapTravel’s partnership with Georgia Tech, you can read a feature story about SnapTravel co-founder and OMSCS alumnus, Henry Shi here or see the full story on the Fellowship recipients.
