You may recall our recent post on Sahana’s internship program, where we announced that the community was welcoming six contributors into the fold to work on communications, bug fixes and new features for Sahana. We wanted to share a bit about each of our interns and the work they’re doing for Sahana, so without further ado, please meet our first intern cohort!
Name: Ashwyn Sharma
Age: 20
Nationality: Indian
Current Residence: New Delhi, India
Loves: sports, The Big Bang Theory and gaming
Personal blog: http://ashwynsharma.blogspot.com
Mentor: Fran Boon, Chair of the Sahana Product Development Committee
Mission for Sahana: Software Development Intern. Ashwyn has been doing development on Sahana Eden for almost a year and has already worked with Fran, Pat and Praneeth for Google Summer of Code™. He starts his internship by working on incoming tickets related to Sahana’s Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.
Fun fact: Ashwyn is a die-hard supporter of Red Bull Racing(F1) and loves Italian food
Name: Estève Giraud
Age: 24
Nationality: French
Current Residence: Barcelona, Spain
Loves: people, all forms of languages
Personal site: Estève’s LinkedIn page
Mentor: Leslie Hawthorn, Sahana Board Member
Mission for Sahana: Communications Intern. Estève discovered the Sahana project at the Open World Forum 2012 in Paris where she met Leslie and Mark Prutsalis. She believes great progress can be made in humanitarian crisis response coordination thanks to open source, and will help to increase awareness of how Sahana contributes to saving lives.
Fun fact: Estève drinks at least one liter of tea per day and is impossible to stop once she starts singing.
Name: Marine Louvigny
Age: 25
Nationality: French
Current Residence: Molo, Kenya
Loves: books, travels and blogging
Personal blog: http://60milessouslequateur.com
Mentor: Mark Prutsalis, CEO of the Sahana Software Foundation
Mission for Sahana: Communications Intern. Marine currently works as a volunteer for the European Open Source Humanitarian Aid (EUROSHA) project, which promotes open source tools and open data use for the humanitarian community in Kenya, including Sahana Eden and Open Street Map. You may want to read Marine’s experiences from the field where she explains how technology can contribute to disaster planning, as well as challenges faced in encouraging NGOs, local and international organizations to adopt new technologies.
Fun fact: Marine was born the same day as Richard Dean Anderson, a.k.a. MacGyver, the ‘80s famous adventurer, whose story has been adapted for a comic book taking place, guess where… in Kenya.
Name: Piyush Aggarwal
Nationality: Indian
Current Residence: Delhi, India
Loves: photography, reading, playing piano
Personal blog: http://about.me/mepiyush
Mentor: Michael Howden, Sahana Board Member
Mission for Sahana: Software Development Intern. As a Research Assistant at Indian Institute of Technology, Piyush’s work deals with the development of low cost tools and technologies for community based organizations. He’s currently developing automated voice based applications for community radio and NGOs. He believes technologies can improve society and help uplift the livelihoods of underprivileged people. Piyush will write up a deployment page for Sahana Sunflower, run tests, fix bugs and develop a proposal on how Sahana Eden can be used for another organization he works with.
Name: Somay Jain
Age: 20
Nationality: Indian
Current Residence: Hyberabad, India
Loves: good music (he plays guitar and keyboard for the college band), algorithmic programming, solving puzzles
Personal blog: https://codeinsomniacs.wordpress.com
Mentor: Michael Howden, Sahana Board Member
Mission for Sahana: Software Development Intern. Somay is pursuing a Bachelor in Computer Science and Engineering at the International Institute Of Information Technology, Hyberabad, India. He will run and review test suites for Sahana, fix bugs and improve the documentation on the test environment.
Fun fact: Somay is crazy about ice cream and can have any amount at any time of the day.
Name: S.P. Mohanty
Age: 21
Nationality: Indian
Current Residence: Hyderabad, India
Loves: Linux, web development, good food, partying, his guitar and reading
Personal blog: web.iiit.ac.in/~sharada.mohanty
Mentor: Fran Boon, Chair of the Sahana Product Development Committee
Mission for Sahana: Software Development Intern. S.P. has been an open source contributor for a while now, working with the Drupal Community, writing code for the Sigmah Project and participating in Google Summer of Code™. He joined Sahana to contribute to Sahana Eden and currently works on its continuous integration server and GIS features.
Fun fact: S.P.’s research work aims to create a world free from the barriers of language.
For our next update on the intern program, we’ll interview Mark Prutsalis on the progress of the intern program and how our interns’ work supports Sahana’s strategic goals.
Please join us in welcoming all of Sahana’s interns!