Once again, it’s well after midnight, and sophomore J’aime Ohm is getting ready for the long walk home. The electrical and computer engineering major is often in the bowels of Hammerschlag and Wean halls into the wee hours, a slave to the computer labs. Since moving off campus, to a neighborhood known more for its cheap rent than strong presence of Boy Scouts, she usually has to make the trek by herself.
On this night, she eschews waiting for an escort home and takes off on foot all alone. Cutting through Schenley Park, she recalls conversations with classmates about their personal safety tactics during such late-night walks alone: watching well ahead in the darkened areas; holding a cell phone to their ears to imply they’re talking to someone; trying to stroll with confidence. She decides that she doesn’t need such drama, and after two semesters of living like this, she moves closer to campus.
Years later, memories of those uneasy walks take on a new meaning during a programming competition called Disrupt Hackathon hosted by TechCrunch, a Web network that has more than 33 million page views a month. She presented a smartphone app called WiseDame, which would have come in handy after those late-night studies on campus. Among other capabilities, WiseDame will contact a user’s checklist of people if the user doesn’t check in by a designated time. The user’s friends can then access the user’s GPS location, battery level, and who else is with the user.
WiseDame beat out 450 competitors at the San Francisco conference to win Top Prize, which enabled Ohm (E’10) to present WiseDame to some of the most influential people in the business. She is currently developing it, in beta form, for commercial release.
—Elizabeth Shestak (HS’03)
Learn more: wisedameapp.com
