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Mission

This project was inspired by a Hackathon competition when my team and I traveleled to Maine and spoke to local farmers where they brought up some of the agricultural issues they have as we shift towards the the informational age.

Our goal is to facilitate and create a platform to connect local farmers and businesses to receive access to better quality and economically affordable products no matter where they are located, all while supporting and fostering relationships between smaller vendors.

From 2011 to 2016 the practice of organic farming has risen by 56% ($7.6 billion) , yet only making up only a small share of U.S. farmland; a total of 1%. Despite this, domestic supply in organic agriculture has been increasing rapidly and demand for other agricultural products is increasing exponentially more (20% annually). Currently, one can only find limited types of seeds within their geographic zones when purchasing vegetable/fruit seeds, hindering for a cheaper alternative to organic or non-GMO cultivation. Even If one can find local distributors for these products, they are not always held in a quantity that meets their demands, especially for farmers. Similarly, many local vendors only provide seeds that are optimal for their specific zone or region, lacking accessibility to variety. However, with the increase of greenhouse farming many can plant and sustain vegitation from different geographic zones. Even though one may find some of these seeds online, most sites do not have a well maintained and categorized inventory to filter based on personalized specifications. This forces many to resort to other larger more expensive corporate and distributor vendors.

Solution

Seedbase. Our search engine and tool based service providing local farmers, businesses, and garden enthusiasts an efficient solution to finding, comparing, and filtering criteria through personalized specifications for seeds, such as price, perennial/hybrid status, and much more - offering a wide variety of products of vegetation and flowers. Using an organized compilation of passionate local businesses and farms offering more accessibility to fresher and cheaper products. Our backend utilizes Elasticsearch in order to enhance and provide a sophisticated search engine for products while using Kibana to recieve realtime data updates and analytics on what customers are most interested in to helping us gather information regarding agricultural demands to cater to individuals needs.

Awards and Recognitions

- Won "Best Data at the Source" Project at HackAE (America East Hackathon)

- Accepted and recognized as top 10 idea at UMBC Idea Competition

React

Node

MongoDB

Elasticsearch

Docker

JavaScript

Python

More Info

- v 0.0.1 Demo (optimized for desktop) from Hackathon

- full project on Github

- Presentation

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Mission

The Unified Ceilometer Network (UCN) is a collaboration between the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) on a ground-based ceilometer network to support activities that will provide a comprehensive multi-dimensional assessment of the chemical and dynamical processes in the lower atmosphere by coupling surface measurements, ceilometer and satellite observations that can aid future policy decisions and strategies to key questions on the influence of gases and aerosols in air quality, atmospheric composition and climate.

Solution

As a technical co-lead, my role was to devise a format to standardize cloud data coming from sites around the North America region to a NetCDF based format to represent multi-dimensional data and recieve a better understanding of the atmosphere. I architecturally designed and implemented applications and backend systems to recieve and process gigabytes of data from 30+ sites in real time through defining compression algorithms and formats. Apart from that, I oversaw the process and developed the application to dynamically generate realtime LiDAR visualizations with other developers and communicated with Agencies and researchers to understand and devise solutions to build the application around their technical needs.

Publications & Other

- Publication Contributions

- Aerosol Profiling for Air Quality and Meteorological Applications

- MARAMA Air Monitoring Training Committee Workshop

- Multiagency Ceilometer Network for Air Quality and Meteorological Applications

- JCET Faculty