Aakanksha Ardhapurkar
Associate Technical Product Owner at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Inc.
Associate Technical Product Owner at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Inc.
I focus primarily on front-end development to allow for seamless user experiences.
            My portfolio: www.aardhapurkar.me
Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Inc.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/mbrdna
Seattle, Washington, United States
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Associate Technical Product Owner
blip energy
https://www.linkedin.com/company/blip-energy
>   Prototyping MVP for IoT application helping users save ~15% on their monthly utility bills based on energy consumption and daily fluctuating utility peak rates.
>   Defining project scope and deliverables to ensure consistency across design, customer insights, and development.
>   Gaining a deeper understanding of users to identify product gaps and generate new features to address pain points, improving user experience and driving user growth.
Evanston, Illinois, United States
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Technical Product Manager
Northwestern University
https://www.linkedin.com/company/northwestern-university
Analyzing data of NU’s ~60,000 hardware assets to write ETL scripts for migration to a new maintenance platform reducing wait time by ~10%, for accurate and streamlined maintenance reports.
> Creating project roadmapfor ETL in time for Fall, and a  proactive maintenance schedule to decrease downtime of hardware assets by ~2-3 days.
Evanston, Illinois, United States
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Student Engineer
Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management
https://www.linkedin.com/company/kellogg-school-of-management
> Providing guidance to MBA student teams on product ideation to ensure a successful product pitch to a board of investors.
> Giving feedback on all class deliverables and case studies to ensure student performance and course completion.
> Adapting the class to entirely virtual methods of teaching - Canvas and Zoom - to facilitate an optimal learning experience and improve overall student performance.
Evanston, Illinois, United States
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Teaching Assistant
Pavlov Media
https://www.linkedin.com/company/pavlov-media
Taking on team lead responsibilities to negotiate requirements with product owner, maintaining sprint backlog, facilitating cross team coordination, while also fulfilling full stack programming responsibilities each sprint. 

Transitioning to backend, building microservices for Pebbles (suite of applications for managing internet settings and user accounts).

Performing DevOps for the front end team, automating build and deployment using Jenkins to reduce human error and speed up production processes, and ensuring it is compatible with our new Angular architecture. Doing frequent releases of our applications (customer facing and libraries), to test our application in production mode and to follow the practice of iterative programming.

Being lead researcher of Angular 5 so the front end team can migrate to it. The research targets all of our existing architecture and seeing with how much ease we can port over existing web applications. 

Having frequent communication with the backend team to ensure that the front end has all of the endpoints necessary to build the UIs, as well as alerting them of bugs, and working with the team to solve them.

Designed and single-handedly developed the new registration wizard that enables thousands of users to sign up for internet. Conducted user testing to find and fix any bugs. 

Worked with my manager to extend out the features of one of our most important customer facing applications – MyAccount-  ensuring both integration and branding was done correctly. Single-handedly implemented the registration wizard ensuring that a user can register and gain access to the wifi from their home.

Worked with the team to build the very first version of our customizable front end generator that automates the generation of our UIs. This meant we saved days of building just the HTML templates, and focused more on the middleware integration.
Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Area
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System Developer
CUC INC
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cuc-inc
At the CUC Fabrication Lab I was involved primarily in engaging with community patrons to help them with any questions or problems they had on their projects. Besides this I was also involved in:

Taking part in classes taught at the Fab Lab, helping write the curriculum and teach it. These curriculums revolved around product innovation, iteration and team building, to encouraging students of various disciplines s to work together to create one product.

Encouraging patrons and students to create products that had a societal impact, to help spread awareness of the good and powerful impact of technology and science on societal issues.

Building prototypes and putting them on display to inspire community patrons to build something of their own.

The upkeep of 3d printers, to ensure they were running smoothly, and eventually teaching community patrons how to use them correctly.
Urbana, IL
Lab Assistant
Microsoft
https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft
My internship at Microsoft broadened my UI design and development skills, and encouraged me to think carefully about how to shape user experiences for a multitude of applications. I was involved in:

Working with my mentor to design a C2C platform for one of Microsoft’s clients. These designs were judged for their aesthetics as well as usability and went through several rounds of iteration.

Learning about user design principles and how to apply them to the C2C platform.

Learning about UI development best practices to successfully build this application using AngularJS and Bootstrap. This enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of JavaScript, not only as a tool to manipulate the DOM, but also how it is used in frameworks.

Documenting all my designs and development so that future programmers would be able to iterate upon this project.
Hyderabad, India
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UI Designer/Developer Intern
CUWiki
I designed and developed the complete UI for the local community Wikipedia.

I built the various pages using MediaWiki, PHP for the backend, CSS3 and JavaScript for the UI, and Python for the scripting language.

I also documented the development/testing environment thoroughly to help future developers as the local wiki is always a work of progress.
Urbana-Champaign, IL
Frontend Developer
Master's Degree
Information Technology
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Northwestern University
https://www.linkedin.com/school/northwestern-university/
Bachelor’s Degree
Bachelor’s of Science – Computer Science, Informatics Minor
Computer Science
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
https://www.linkedin.com/school/university-of-illinois-urbana-champaign/
WIE
-
ACM
-
WCS
-
Phi Theta Kappa
Invitation to Honor Society
Advanced Interaction Design
ARTD 499
Algorithms & Models of Computations
CS 374
Data Structures
CS 225
Database Systems
CS 411
Design of Usable Information Interfaces
LIS 351
Intro to Data Science
INFO 490
Numerical Analysis
CS 450
Programming Studio
CS 242
Social Interaction
CS 467
System Programming
CS 241
Tech in Advertising Campaigns
CS 468
The Art of Web Programming
CS 498
Topics In Human-Computer Interactions
CS 565
User Interface
CS 465
Web Technologies
INFO 390
>   Discovered unmet needs of building a product for 40 million users and $200 million market of menstrual cup users.
>   Interviewed >100 people about their customer journey over time and identified top 3 problem themes.
>   Designed, prototyped, and tested the product with 40 users with 30 NPS score.
>   Roadmapped, and product managed product from ideation to first iteration using Agile methodology for streamlined deliverables.
>   Competed in a student startup competition for funding. Launching product in Beta/MVP test in October 2020.
OkaTrack
>   Managed concept-to-launch of web app allowing travelers to digitize old and new travel memories by working with customers and understanding use cases and pain points. 
>   Prioritized backlog, weighed trade-offs, communicated outcomes to stakeholders. Worked collaboratively with Dev team to plan sprints and consistently deliver before deadlines.
>   Played key role in designing and building intuitive landing pages and user interfaces leading to a 10% higher user conversion rate.
Bene
Managed concept-to launch of Android app transitioning educational material to a virtual learning environment. Released on Google Play in February ’18 with >5,000 installs.
> Led design of features providing users with the ability to view and save educational videos so they can access it on-the-go effortlessly.
> Ensured product features met or exceeded user expectations. Excelled at gathering feedback and requirements; produced an accurate and achievable product roadmap leading to seamless, high-quality roll-outs.
PuStack
A responsive e-ticketing platform that allows users to book tickets for sporting events. Admins can also create sporting events and allocate appropriate stadium space for each event.
This application was developed entirely using SVG, D3.js and Angular for the core structure, data rendering,  and logic. This allows users to dynamically create custom shapes to allocate appropriate seating in the stadium.
The user interface itself was developed using best practice HTML5, and CSS3, and was made responsive.
Saudi Makani
Social Services
Clark-Lindsey
https://www.linkedin.com/company/clark-lindsey
During the course of this project, I would offer help with any technological issues the residents were facing.
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Tech Help
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sai-manohar-dhulipala-24b32454
Detroit Metropolitan Area
Sai Manohar Dhulipala
Senior Motor Control Engineer at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Inc.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adingler
Portland, Oregon Metropolitan Area
Andy Dingler
Lead Machine Learning Engineer at Daimler Trucks North America
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shankar-mahesh-65548842
Detroit Metropolitan Area
Shankar Mahesh
Emissions and OBD Technical Compliance Engineer at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Inc.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhillai
New York, NY
Nikhil Lai
Account Executive at Marpipe
https://be.linkedin.com/in/thibaut-feremans
Brussels
Thibaut Feremans
Project Leader at BCG | Co-Founder at blip | Kellogg MBA
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paula-berenguer-hancock-83768897
San Francisco, CA
Paula Berenguer Hancock
Sr. Manager, People & Culture Strategy at Stitch Fix
https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-agada-68372695
San Francisco Bay Area
Angela Agada
Account Executive, New Business at Salesforce
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chance-cobb
Mill Valley, CA
Chance Cobb
Co-Founder & COO @ blip energy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiera-wood-717b80ab
New York, NY
Kiera Wood
Sales Marketing Strategist at Twitch
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kativombergar
Greater Cleveland
Kati Vombergar
Business Economics Student at Miami University
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tararoudi
San Francisco, CA
Tara Roudi
Consultant @ Bain | Kellogg MBA + McCormick MSDI | Ex-Googler
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-kontorovich-08065589
Greater Chicago Area
Dennis Kontorovich
Partner at Bruk Consulting | Co-Founder at blip energy | Kellogg MBA
https://www.linkedin.com/in/minesh-patel-754a9918
San Francisco Bay Area
Minesh Patel
Finance & Strategy Lead at Rippling
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizstanfelkellogg
Evanston, IL
Liz Stanfel
MBA Summer Intern - Product Management at blip energy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/avery-marcus-37a0b265
Greater Chicago Area
Avery Marcus
MBA Candidate at Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-andersen-629b7249
Boston, MA
Brett Andersen
Harvard MBA Candidate
https://nl.linkedin.com/in/aagjalpankaj
Veghel
Pankaj Aagjal
Exploring (BAS) World 🌎
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pooja-goyal-358a0024
New York, NY
Pooja Goyal
Partner and Co-Head Infrastructure Group at The Carlyle Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachinkarve
San Jose, CA
Sachin Karve
Software Developer - Full-stack
Liked by Aakanksha Ardhapurkar
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I work 9-5I'll binge NetflixI take hot showersI sleep in here & thereI’m not focused 100% of the timeI don't always write down my goalsAnd…
Liked by Aakanksha Ardhapurkar
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Nine residence halls are named after 10 women who have had a profound impact at #ILLINOIS.🔸 Allen 🔹 Blaisdell🔸 Saunders🔹 Bousfield🔸…
Liked by Aakanksha Ardhapurkar
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Dear Google,Whomstsoever developed the Gmail function that doesn't let you send an email without an attachment when you wrote in the email that you…
TEDxUIUC
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https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4080875
UIUC Networking
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https://www.linkedin.com/groups/35926
Illinois Women in Computer Science
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https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4473443
Hackathon Hackers
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https://www.linkedin.com/groups/6748974
Northwestern University - MS in Information Technology (MSIT) Alumni Group
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https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13601846
INTLconnect at Illinois (for International Alumni and Students of UIUC)
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https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4194132
ISH Alum (International School of Hyderabad)
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https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3732711