Through my projects in sustainable energy, I was introduced to Dr. Sid Saleh, Director of the McNeil Center of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Saleh, a lifelong entrepreneur and former product manager at Apple, and I connected. At the time, he was looking for help in running his main class Innov8x, a project-based entrepreneurship incubator. I worked as a Teaching Assistant for Innov8x during the Spring 2022 semester, and the following semester, taking a light load of classes, I decided to enroll as a student in Innov8x.
Innovation challenge, fall 2022
Throughout the semester, I worked with a diverse team of engineers and computer scientists from Turkey, Germany, and the United States in a project to better communicate value in the mineral supply chain. We worked with Dr. Şebnem Düzgün, distinguished chair and professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines, to create a digital platform that could provide education on key issues within the mineral supply chain to users of different expertise. After months of interviews with stakeholders ranging from local journalists to jewelers to sourcing managers at major automotive companies, we designed "Supply Chain Illumination". Supply Chain Illumination is a website which integrates up-to-date data, unique technical expertise and an easy user interface to build comprehensive understanding of three critical issues within the supply chain (transparency, resiliency, and sustainability).