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Yanqing, Pablo, Claire, and Alastair during the Canadian Expo

Hello everyone! We designed and developed Project Sentinel, an intelligent profile analyzer that identifies safe connections. Before we explain our product, let us introduce the team:

Alastair Lewis

Apprentice of Queen's, the Terror of Skiers, Kafka wrestler, and records spinning Master. 

Alastair is currently gearing up for his final year of his Software Development Degree at Queen’s University. Alastair’s main role on Project Sentinel has been System Architecture where he wrestles with Kafka topics on a daily basis and types commands so fast that Linux can’t keep up. His passions aside from software and technology include hitting up the gym to work on his gains, spinning EDM records in the club (Basement mostly), and skiing at irresponsibly dangerous speeds. Fun fact, Alastair came up with the team name Sentinel after watching a mediocre at best thriller named The Sentinel. He gives it a 2/10, wouldn’t recommend. Claire Dalkie

Daughter of U of T, the Queen of Intelligent Machines, Commander of pandas and pythons, and Sage of English Language.

Claire is entering her third year in Engineering Science at the University of Toronto, where she is specializing in Machine Intelligence. Claire's role on Project Sentinel was to build the core of our Machine Learning component, which means she spent most of the summer taming dangerous programming creatures, such as pythons and pandas. When Claire isn't coding, she is reviewing the slides and scripts for our pitch: making sure we don't waste too many words when trying to convey our message in 4 minutes. Fun fact, Claire is a Harry Potter aficionado, and has spent the summer re-reading the series' books.

Pablo Nazé

Child of Rotman, The Knower of acronyms, Powerpoint and Excel Ninja, and the fear of dead composers

Pablo is originally from Brazil and is currently pursuing his MBA at the Rotman School of Management, at the University of Toronto. Pablo's main responsibility is to build Project Sentinel's business case and to steer the project's development. When not working on Powerpoint or Excel, Pablo is driving developers crazy by  reviewing some code and threatening to push his own code – you don't want to see that!Outside of work, Pablo has an interest for the arts, especially music and dance. A tap dancer for almost a decade, his most recent endeavour was to start learning to play piano during the summer. Yanqing Wu

Warrior of Waterloo, Git God, Killer of all bugs, GUI expert, and sketch master

Yanqing is in his third year of Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Yanqing's role during the summer was to manage our Github repository, review code and create our amazing graphical user interface for our demo. Without Yanqing, we wouldn't be able to convey our code and ideas into an easily accessible interface, responsible for winning the hearts of our stakeholders.  When not at the office, you can spot Yanqing drawing and making beautiful pencil sketches. Throughout the summer we worked with the Data Security team in Toronto. Our project uses Machine Learning to identify which connections attempting to access a database can be trusted, thus increasing the efficiency and visibility for system administrators.  

When not brainstorming and working on our Project, our favourite activity is to play a new sport, Extreme Foosball. Yes, you read it correctly, extreme. It is the same old foosball, but instead of one ball we play with two balls and four players. It can get pretty hectic and that is why it's so competitive fun (Also: Team Alastair-Yanqing wins most of the time!)

We really enjoyed our time at IBM and in New York, where we could meet the other Extreme Blue teams and present our pitch in the U.S

It has been a remarkable journey, tiring yet rewarding. Working on dynamic rescheduling with the next-gen AI-enabled decision making for our clients has actually led to some amazing dynamics in the team.

Photo 1: From left to right: Heena, Himanshi, Manav and Victor @ first Dragon’s Den

Changing the product name from Apptomise to WARPdrive, trying very hard to come up with an identifier to working hard on linear programming and optimization formulas, reading countless research papers on Model Predictive Control to programming Markov Decision Process, staying in the office until midnight to investigating the technical details with our mentors - it has been a never-ending yet worthwhile experience for more than nine weeks now.

Let us introduce ourselves.

Manav - Hired as one of the technical interns, he is the youngest member in the team. Originally from India, he moved to Canada last year to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. Although being a techie, he has a keen interest in entrepreneurship and tries hard to understand the business side of the project. He keeps irritating Heena to aim for bigger profit numbers (why millions, let’s go for billions right?). Elon Musk being his role model, he is passionate about robotics and dreams to build a humanoid assistant for himself someday. He loves travelling and exploring new places, talking to people and understanding different cultures.

Himanshi - She is the technical intern of the team and currently pursuing her Masters at University of Waterloo. A big-time foodie, she loves to try different cuisines. When she is not in the office, you will find her mostly exploring the outdoors (hiking, cycling etc.). She feels that the internship is helping her learn so much about herself apart from IBM and the product. Also, let’s share the quote that keeps her going: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Victor - Victor was born and raised in the bustling city state of Hong Kong. He came to the other half of the earth seeking opportunities and looking for a new home. After studying Computer Science with Minor in Big Data Technology in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Victor decided to pursue machine learning from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, where he is currently attending the Masters of Big Data program. After being a Unity game programmer (cool, right?) for a year in the biggest game studio in Hong Kong, he challenged himself by moving into the field of machine learning as he was curious about how Watson could beat human players in Jeopardy and wanted to understand artificial intelligence in the coding and mathematical level. Victor enjoys dining, travelling, watching movies and drama series, gaming, music, hiking, exploring the nature and different cultures, writing and visiting museums. Being the technical intern in the Extreme Blue program is one of the biggest joys and achievements of his life. This Extreme Blue program is very meaningful and precious to Victor as he gets exposure to the business side of products and senior-level pitching skills where no other normal internship in Canada offers. Every day he learns new things from colleagues in different teams. Stepping out of the comfort zone is the most important lesson he has learnt in the program.

Heena - Heena is the business Intern of the team. She is currently pursuing her MBA from McGill University after starting her career as a software engineer. Working with half a dozen companies and living in 4 countries brought her here finally. Trying very hard to remember what she did in her engineering days, she tries to talk business now. And well, she is a very talkative person. In her free time, she reads and writes.

All four of us together stay in our private room at the IBM lab in Markham. We work on WARPdrive most of the time and reflect on our life decisions the other times. Sometimes we welcome our friends from other departments to come to our den.

After attending the orientation in Ottawa, we settled into our Markham lab, where our entire DBA team currently sits. Preparing for the first Dragon’s Den was challenging since our idea was in a very rudimentary stage at the time. Apparently, we had very little clue about the actual technical and business implementation. Nevertheless, we presented well and received constructive feedback. We have definitely learned a lot in the past nine weeks.

Photo 2: First day of the EB program in Ottawa!

Glamping was the highlight of the EB experience. We travelled south to Long Point Eco Adventures at St. Williams, Ontario. Setting free from laptops for three days, we enjoyed going into the wild and taking a break from work. We got a chance to enjoy the breeze and sunbathe at the beach and run for the ball in the chilly cold lake. We learned how to throw a real sharp axe and zip-line through forest canopies and over river streams. Our first-time zip-lining experience was a memorable experience. Well (don’t tell this to anyone), we lost the group games and got to sleep in the most basic glamping pods without any electricity or bathroom facilities. Yet it was exceptionally tranquil in the midnight. It gave us the chance to get close to the nature and rest in calmness. The campfire at night was full of warmth from the fire. We melted smore waffle cones and heard some not-so-scary scary tales. We all got to know more about members from other teams and played politically-incorrect board games with them. The days of the glamping trip were fun, and we were refreshed after the trip to get back and refocus on our project. We look forward to the New York trip in August!

Photo 3: The entire EB 2019 at the glamping trip at Long Point Eco Adventures

Photo 4: Us in front of our camping pods!

Dragon’s Den 2 was just in a week’s time after we returned from glamping. We prepared harder than the first time focusing on the feedback from Dragons Den 1. We were confident this time since we knew the best strategy to implement both the technical and business solution. Our mentors from the DBA team have been supporting us all throughout. We sailed through the Dragon’s Den 2 and are confident for the upcoming Dress Rehearsals in July. Thank you for reading the part and parcel of our Extreme Blue experience. We are ready for more!!

Because WARPdrive is prepared for the WARP speed!

P.S. WARP stands for Work Allocation and Resource Planning.