Projects

skip to the ↓ writing ↓ tech ↓ teaching ↓ art

Writing

• I recently started writing a newsletter about computational biology. Within three days of posting my first article, my subscribers included top researchers, biotech industry leaders, and VCs from around the world. I've also been featured in Decoding Bio — one of my own favorite newsletters!

• I'm a staff writer for The Harvard Crimson. I've written about self-care, art-tech, Harvard's COVID-19 testing measures, and more.

• I wrote a paper about archetypal analysis for single-cell sequencing data with my friend. Archetypal analysis is an interpretable form of dimensionality reduction that estimates the convex hull of a dataset, creating extreme "archetype" points that represent the data. It's particularly exciting for determining the cell types that make up a mixed population of cells.
• I took a seminar course about brain regeneration and cellular reprogramming and got really interested in in vivo direct lineage reprogramming as a potential treatment for neurodegeneration. Read my short paper on the subject here.

Tech

• My friend and I created Privazy, an educational quiz game designed to teach Gen Z students about digital privacy. I developed the app from scratch and built it all in less than a week, with little prior JavaScript experience, teaching myself and iterating on my code along the way. In addition to the development, I designed its flow and interactive elements, and helped write the script.
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• Over a snowy winter break weekend, I made a smart teleprompter app that uses voice recognition to scroll through your script as you speak.
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• First semester at Harvard, I created Slab, a streamlined and organized electronic lab notebook (ELN) for scientific protocols.
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Teaching

• Check out my theoretical CS curriculum here!
• From my teaching evals:
  • "Amulya was the best TF ever. Always had such good explanations during office hours"
  • "She helped me out a lot in office hours and did a really good job helping move us toward better understanding of the concepts underlying the problems. Her TFing made the class feel much less stressful and more accessible"
  • "She always comes to section and office hours insanely prepared, and her section slides were a super helpful study tool!!"
  • "She was the GOAT at office hours, super supportive/helpful!"

• I created a CS fundamentals curriculum from scratch, including a design guide used across the teaching team. I also developed and taught a seminar on Python for statistical analysis and visualization: watch it here, download and playthru here.
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• From my teaching evals:
  • "CS50 staff should look to Amulya to see how CS50 should be done right."
  • "She has a vast amount of knowledge and it shows in her teaching."
  • "I always found [material] better explained by her than in the section or lecture."
  • "I am so happy to have had her as my lab leader. She was absolutely perfect. Couldn't have wish for anyone better!!!!!"

Art

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• (above) A portrait of Jade Asean, a local activist (please zoom in and read)
• In 2020, I created a series of portraits of essential workers and community organizers. I presented the portraits along with quotes from each featured individual and information on how others can contribute to their cause. I was grateful to hear about what drives their work and how others can help.
• You can check out my art Instagram, where I post the portraits, here.
• If you're interested in being featured (or know someone who'd like to be featured), please email me at amu.garimella@gmail.com.