#SoCaltech: Iman Wahle

"Rupesh [Jeyaram] and I are both seniors and computer science majors. We’ve taken a lot of CS courses together before and have worked together on class projects. Seeing all the news and media around COVID-19, we were really eager to help in any way we could. We jumped on The New York Times dataset when they released it; we were excited to have the chance to make current case data more accessible by showing the spread of the pandemic in the United States through an interactive map. We started this project working remotely from our respective homes on opposite sides of the country, in Portland, Oregon, and Boston, Massachusetts. Especially with everyone so spread out now, it’s been nice to still be able to collaborate with a classmate on a project, even from afar. Lessons we’ve learned from our research projects have been very applicable to this work. Rupesh’s recent environmental science SURF [Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship] gave him experience visualizing large datasets across space and time, and my research work in neuroscience has similarly helped me learn how to share data in a way that’s informative, accessible, and motivating." 

Iman Wahle is a Caltech senior majoring in computer science. Wahle and fellow senior Rupesh Jeyaram created a website showing cases of and deaths from COVID-19 in U.S. counties since the first reported case.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.