WECLOME TO MY HOME PAGE
Here are a few recent projects I have been working on.
DUMA ( DUMA )
DUMA is two-pronged enterprise that leverages its SMS-based software and community theater outreaches to bring job networking, job text alerts, and job training to the informal sector of Kenya. Right now, the informal sector constitutes 75% of employed people and 98% of businesses in Kenya, but generates only 18% of GDP. Moreover, job searching currently occurs via word-of-mouth, which restricts access to potential employees and encourages hiring with a disregard for skills. DUMA personalizes the job search and sparks job creation as a high-speed, high-tech, job-networking platform for the developing world. Study Buddies ( DUMA Study buddies ) As a prototype for DUMA we built an email-based platform that we could use to test the algorithm for recommending employer-employee pairs. This was a study-budy finder that we deployed and tested in Princeton during the fall 2011. It's goal is to help people who are in the same classes and need friends to study with establish the required connections. It would also help us test the methods of recommendation using graphs and the algorithms used to "learn" user preferences.
M-Profesa ( www.mprofesa.com )
M-Profesa is a web based test prep service that is intended to help students in Kenya prepare for the all important Kenya Certificate of Primary Education Exam. This exam is required for admission into all Kenyan high schools and performance in this examination is key to any student's academic future. Therefore over 700,000 students take it every single year. Test preparation for this exam is wanting especially for people who cannot afford private tutoringIn Kenya, cellphones have become the key to communication, banking, businesses and several other sectors of the economy. This means that a cellphone has become a big priority for the population. This therefore creates an opportunity to provide test preparation on this platform especially for students who find it difficult to access test prep material. M-Profesa tries to meet this challenge by providing test preparation for the KCPE on a mobile platform. Once complete, it will be adaptable to individual students by using recommendation systems to select questions and review material for students. It will also be very light weight and include features that enable working offline. The goal of this is to make it practical in a country where internet connection is widely available but it is often slow and intermittent.
Soundnet (www.princeton.edu/~ekuto/project.html.)
I participated in Princeton's Summer Programming expericences which is a program that provides new students to the field of computer science with an opportunity to perform research on the subject of their interest. I got to work with Xiaojuan Ma, a graduate student in the computer science department who works on digital signal processing.
For a more in-depth explanation of the project, please visit www.princeton.edu/~ekuto/project.html.
Maskani Website
This is a venture that a friend and I started to help people find housing in a more convinient way. It is currently in use in Eldoret Visit the website on www.maskani.co.ke.
Akwaaba
Akwaaba is Princeton University's African Students Association. I designed their website: www.princeton.edu/~akwaaba.