Program Staff
Please reach out to staff@redefine-cs.org if you have any general questions.
2024 Instructors
Manu Prakasam he/him
Manu Prakasam graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He’s interested in environmentalism, tennis, and tech policy, but these days he mostly spends his free time pretending to train for a marathon.
Nishita Jain she/her
Nishita Jain recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, with degrees in CS & Management through the M&T Program. She’s excited by fintech innovations, equitable education, and sustainable fashion.
Tanushree Jain she/her
Tanushree Jain is a freshman at UC Berkeley studying Economics and Computer Science. In her free time, she loves watching movies and TV shows (Avatar: The Last Airbender is her favorite), reading, and painting.
Emily Liu she/her
Emily Liu graduated from Duke University, where she studied computer science and journalism. She likes cooking, running, and reading — tell her about your favorite book!
Former Teaching Assistants
Enzo Bergamo he/him
Enzo Bergamo is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying Systems Engineering. He does fencing and loves watching Doctor Who.
Haaset Owens she/her
Haaset Owens is a senior at Inderkum High School. She enjoys writing, drawing and running. She took the redefine course last summer.
Jasmine Vallejo she/her
Jasmine Vallejo is a senior at Downey High School. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, swimming, and watching movies. She took the redefine course last summer.
Tanaka Muchemwa she/her
Tanaka Muchemwa is a rising sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying Business Analytics and Computer Science. She likes hiking, painting, spontaneously exploring new places and zumba.
Former Mentors
Brandon Obas he/him
Brandon is a product manager at Dropbox. He lives in Miami, FL and enjoys watching anime in his free time.
Dayana Hudson she/her
Dayana Hudson is a software developer at Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY and 250+ other newspapers. She is a first-generation college graduate, originally from Colombia. She studied at George Mason University and graduated in 2017 with her B.S. in Computer Science. In her free time, she enjoys travelling (pre-pandemic), studying and practicing foreign languages, and arts and crafts (painting, sewing, knitting).
Hannah Gonzalez she/her
Hannah is a rising junior majoring in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is from Mexico City. She is currently interning at Microsoft as a software engineer + program manager. She loves painting and watching the Big Bang Theory.
Hyacinthe Uwizera she/her
Hyacinthe is a software engineer at Intuit. She is from Kigali - Rwanda and has a BSE in Computer Science from UPenn. In her free time she usually watches all types of shows, travels, and has been trying to learn new skills like skating.
Keren Fuentes she/her
Keren graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019, and she is now a software engineer at Microsoft. She really enjoys hiking, running, playing the violin, and playing with doggos.
Meri Kavtelishvili she/her
Meri Kavtelishvili graduated from the University of Pennsylvania this year with a degree in Computer Science. This summer, she will be starting to work at a start-up called Neeva - a search engine that is private and ad-free. Meri is from Tbilisi, Georgia, and in her free time she enjoys watching TV shows (her current favorite is This Is Us), and drinking a lot of tea.
Rebecca Iglesias-Flores she/her
Rebecca is a first-generation Mexican-American in the United States, her parents are from Tamaulipas, Reynosa Mexico. She received her B.S. in Chemistry in 2010 and worked in the DNA/Genetics research industry for 5 years before crossing over to Computer Science. She is currently a PhD student under Chris Callison-Burch at University of Pennsylvania and works in a niche field of computer science called Natural Language Processing (NLP). Her research interests are now event extraction and cross-lingual information retrieval and currently helps a multi-billion dollar project for the U.S. government called DARPA KAIROS. Current reading list: “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future!”
Suzanne Knop she/they
Suzanne is a software engineer at Bloomberg working on a JavaScript graphics library for data visualization. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied Computer Science, Computer Graphics, and English. She loves fiction, making stuff, philosophical discussions, art, and coffee!
Ziad Ben Hadj-Alouane he/him
Ziad (pronounced Ziyed/Zee yed) studied computer science and finance at UPenn. He is now a software engineer at NVIDIA, working on advancing AI and Graphics products. His passions include gaming, fantasy genres, and personal finance.