Engineering on the rise

This year is the fourth year of Carnegie Mellon University recognizing Tartans on the Rise, a group of alumni who have graduated within the past 10 years and who are already having an outstanding impact in their fields and professions. Seven out of this year’s 24 Tartans on the Rise honorees are graduates of the College of Engineering, specializing in fields from cybersecurity to public health.

Sheyda Demooei (EPP 2015, ECE 2016) & Chelsie Hall (III 2018)

Co-founders, Chief Technology Officer & Chief Executive Officer: ViralMoment

Together, Sheyda Demooei and Chelsie Hall developed ViralMoment, an AI-driven social intelligence tool that monitors insights from conversations on social media. After starting work at the Department of Defense, Hall pitched the concept to Demooei, who coded the technology ViralMoment runs on. They launched the company together in 2021.

“In starting ViralMoment, I realized what a huge gap we used to have in understanding people, culture, and communications because we didn’t have tools to read video. There was so much rich nuance happening in the way that we talk to each other. But until it could be measured, it was just this huge black hole,” Hall said.

Since its launch, ViralMoment has been used by companies like Coca-Cola, Hulu, and Delta Airlines to manage their brands online. Demooei and Hall have also noticed it can be a powerful tool to break through echo chambers created by algorithms.

“I’m from Iran, and I saw a lot of family members spiral into misinformation in posts during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Demooei said. “I was also bothered by my news feeds—I only saw posts I agreed with. When Chelsie pitched the idea for ViralMoment, I saw the value right away.”

Adewale Desalu (ECE/BME 2014)

Software engineering manager: Nike; Founder: Adewunmi Desalu Parkinson’s Foundation

Adewale Desalu graduated just in time for Nike to pivot from producing wearable fitness devices to developing mobile apps, which he helped to create. He has worked on the Nike Run Club and Nike Training apps, which help users keep track of many different health goals. The apps have a wide reach, and are enjoyed by users around the world (including Desalu’s own family in Nigeria and Uganda).

Desalu also founded the Adewunmi Desalu Parkinson’s Foundation in 2022 after his father passed away from the disease in 2019. The foundation focuses on raising awareness of Parkinson’s disease and on supporting families living with it in Nigeria.

“Our main goal is to create a support system for people with Parkinson’s and their caregivers,” Desalu said. “We help people with Parkinson’s understand what is changing, find their autonomy and fight the feeling of helplessness in order to live much fuller lives.”

Karan Dwivedi (INI 2016)

Cybersecurity expert: Yahoo, Google

Karan Dwivedi‘s life mission is to create a safe internet, and for years he has been on the front lines protecting user data against security breaches. When Yahoo accounts were hacked in one of the largest breaches in history, Dwivedu was part of the team tasked with figuring out what happened and how to stop it from happening again.

Dwivedu understood Yahoo’s infrastructure from having interned there as a student, and this knowledge made him an invaluable member of the team. He gained a reputation as a cybersecurity expert: “I became trusted for my technical expertise, and the CEO personally thanked me.”

Now, he leads large-scale projects at Google and works to educate the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.

Brent Ifemembi (ChemE/BME 2018, BME 2019)

Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer: Drūl

Brent Ifemembi is the co-founder of Drūl, a company based around a device he developed to test for tooth and gum disease before cavities develop. By sequencing bacterial DNA, the test can identify up to 700 kinds of bacteria in less than 30 minutes, making it uniquely powerful; while many other biomarker tests exist, the few that are applied to dentistry can take up to two weeks. Drūl, on the other hand, can determine if a patient is at risk during their visit, allowing the dentist to deal with potential problems immediately.

“We’re excited that we think that with our method we can detect earlier stages, and that can also help increase patient education and patient compliance,” Ifemembi said.

Jasmine Kwasa (ECE 2021)

Chief Technology Officer: Precision Neuroscopics, Inc.

Jasmine Kwasa is developing innovations to electroencepholography (EEG) technology, which is critical for collecting data in many neuroscience experiments. In order to get good readings, EEG electrodes must be securely fastened to the subject’s scalp, but current electrodes are not designed with Afro-textured hair in mind, leading to racial disparities in research.

Kwasa set out to fix this. She joined the Grover lab and there she developed the Sevo adaptor for electrodes, which improved EEG readings from people with Afro-textured hair. She now works to commercialize this technology at her role as the CTO of Precision Neuroscopics.

Shaun Ranadé (BME 2016)

National Institutes of Health Public Health Fellow

Shaun Ranadé‘s research focuses on diabetes, which is a growing public health issue across the world. While on a clinical rotation at NIH, he learned that South Asian populations develop diabetes differently than Western populations do. He spent his year-long Fulbright scholarship in Nepal working with 60 women studying how diabetes in pregnant people affects the health outcomes of their families. He hopes to improve diagnostic and treatment strategies to improve the health of mothers and their children.

“The research I’m conducting in a rural, resource-limited environment has far-reaching implications,” he said. “Many of the challenges we see in Nepal are directly relevant to women’s health issues in the United States and globally. By advancing early detection and management strategies, we can not only improve outcomes in developing nations but also help shape policies that make medical technologies more accessible and affordable.”

We’re so proud of all our Tartans on the Rise, and we can’t wait to see what they do next. Learn more about this year’s Tartans on the Rise.