Uma Sthanu (https://uma.sthanu.us/) is a high school student with a passion for Computer Science and Business, a strong belief in using technology as an enabler for problem solving, and a passion to drive equitable access to education & healthcare for all.
Uma has incubated 2 companies even as a pre-teen:
- an Ed-tech start-up, T2L Academy, to provide education for all, removing economic barriers by making educational resources accessible to all and for free through videos delivered online & creating a learning hub to help students. T2L Academy focuses on content to help K-12 students to participate in various elementary, middle, and high school competitions in Science, Math, Arts & Literature. Uma believes that the opportunity she had to participate in these and win over 100 awards to date has given her the exposure and relevant experiences that go well beyond the regular academic rigor and has made learning fun. Through T2L Academy, she shares that learning with all and hopes to inspire.
- a Health-tech startup, Sayffer, that provides a suite of applications to help improve healthcare on a global scale. Sayffer’s first product focused on creating a secure & compliant health data sharing application for K-12 staff, teachers & parents – with a mission to digitize the manual communication and collaboration that exists in K-12 around health data. The application is accessible to all and available on all mobile platforms, and built with HIPAA & FERPA compliance. Sayffer’s 2nd application, TBDetect, recognizes the potential of AI & ML technology to solve problems at a global scale and help address the ongoing Tuberculosis pandemic, which, despite being centuries old, continues to kill over a million a year, especially in Africa and South Asia. TBDetect hopes to help many nonprofit organizations and smaller hospitals battling Tuberculosis around the world and struggling with the lack of sufficient qualified medical resources.
Both of Sayffer’s products have won State and National level awards, such as 1st place in the Texas State Science & Engineering Fair System Software, the Broadcom Coding with Commitment award, the Society of Women Engineers Award for Excellence in Science, Engineering and Mathematics, placed at the Austin Regional Science Fair in the Translational Medical Science category, an innovation award from the Dell Center for Healthy Living, the 1st place from the BioAustin foundation and was a Broadcom MASTERS semifinalist (Top 300 in the Nation).
Uma has also won 1st place in multiple Number Sense and Literature competitions at the University Interscholastic League created by UT Austin, was the runner-up at the New York Times Global STEM Writing Contest for her essay on human facial recognition (placed in the top 26 out of 3741 contestants worldwide), and was a Semifinalist at Project CSGirls’ national program competition in 2022. Uma has also participated in hackathons in the past, winning Best Sustainability Hack in WaffleHacks 2023, as well as earning Honorable Mentions for Best Use of AI and Best Beginner Hack, out of over 500 participants (high school and college students from around the globe). Uma also participates in business competitions such as DECA and won the 1st Place Testing Award at the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in 2023 in the Business Management category.
Uma has completed certification in Machine Learning for Healthcare from Stanford University, and in Business Strategy and Design Thinking for Innovation from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. She has also obtained other marketing and data science certifications from Google, IBM, and Hubspot, attended a Girls in Engineering summer camp at UC Berkeley, and is part of the Google CodeNext Class of 2023.
Most importantly, Uma believes that a little effort to make a positive impact can go a long way in giving back to our society and making it a better place for all.