University Honors Program
Honors Portfolio
A collection of reflections and experiences from my journey through the University of Cincinnati Honors Program — from finding my footing as an international student to building startups and presenting research.
Reflections
Year-in-Reviews
2024–2025
The most defining year yet — first internship at Phillips Edison, top-25 at EFest, podium presentation at AMIA, 2nd place at CMU's VC competition, and promoted to General Partner at Bearcat Ventures.
2023–2024
Silicon Valley trip with the Center of Entrepreneurship, Venture Lab accelerator with PhizzIO, and first co-op at Phillips Edison — a year of solidifying direction in AI and startups.
2022–2023
Transitioning from Abu Dhabi to Cincinnati, finding community through engineering clubs and research, and discovering a passion for entrepreneurship through Startup Weekend.
Writeups
Honors Experiences
Venture Lab
UC Center of Entrepreneurship
Selected for the 24th Cohort of the Venture Lab pre-accelerator. Refined PhizzIO's business model through customer discovery, mentorship from healthcare EIRs, and pitched to the Cincinnati startup ecosystem.
Trip to San Francisco
Center of Entrepreneurship & CEAS
A life-changing trip to Silicon Valley — visiting Apple, Google, IDEO, Y Combinator, and attending Notion's AI feature launch. A reminder that no goal is beyond reach.
Foundation of Engineering Design Thinking Research
Applying engineering design thinking to redesign the UC mobile app with Dr. Nora Honken — from empathy surveys to a working prototype presented at the Undergraduate Scholarly Showcase.
Biomedical Research and Mentorship Program (RaMP)
Working with the ICDCU bioinformatics lab on HIRConnect — a research project management system for Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Co-authored a paper and won "Excellence in Research Communication" at the USS.
RaMP Continuation
Biomedical Research and Mentorship Program
Continuing as a full-stack developer on HIRConnect under Dr. Danny Wu — taking ownership of front-end and back-end development, co-authoring a research paper, and learning hard lessons about production testing.