Meet the Class of 2026: Our Founding Public Interest Lab Cohort
This summer, fifteen fellows spent their nights and weekends building for New York City's nonprofits as the inaugural class of the hackNY Public Interest Lab. The program just wrapped, and we could not be more excited to introduce them to you.
This cohort covered a lot of ground: urban planners, robotics engineers, healthcare researchers, and AI engineers. They spent their summer nights and weekends building for free because the work mattered to them. Meet them below!
Grace Pimentel is a Web and Mobile Computing student at Rochester Institute of Technology with interests spanning UX/UI, mobile development, and full-stack engineering. Outside of class, she's a reader, a cook, and the owner of a 660+ day Duolingo streak, and she unwinds with minute cryptics.
Brittany Jeffery is pursuing a Master of Urban Planning at Hunter College. Her standout project, AutoCEQR, tackled a problem she saw firsthand working in environmental review consulting. New York City's Environmental Review process relies on expensive consultants who spend hundreds of hours manually pulling data from disconnected city, state, and federal datasets, costs that ultimately drive up housing and infrastructure prices. Her tool automates that data collection to save time and reduce errors. Outside of tech, she volunteers monthly at her local food bank in Crown Heights
Emmanuel Rayendra works on building and protecting trust in an increasingly digital world, with a focus on systems that affect how the public accesses services. He got his start on Singpass, Singapore's national digital identity system, and is now in NYC for his master's. This summer, he researched agentic AI authorization and delegation.
Jerica Huang studied Computer and Information Science at Cornell, drawn to the field for its impact, creativity, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. She thinks a lot about the ethical implications of AI's growing presence in daily life. By day, she's an AI Engineer at American Express, and she brings experience in technical product management, teaching software development at a nonprofit bootcamp, and even producing films.
Hayun Jung is a junior at UMass Amherst studying Computer Science and Math. This summer, she also interned at Fidelity on the Security Finance Technologies team. Off the clock, she's a dedicated foodie whose current fixation is sweet potatoes.
Divya Pattisapu is a data scientist at PwC working in the regulatory and fraud space, with a love of crafts and music outside of work.
Nashita Bhuiyan is a graduate student in Computer Science at NYU focused on how technology can address challenges in healthcare and public service. She conducts research at Columbia developing computer vision tools for healthcare applications, and previously worked as a Data Science Intern at the NIH. She also co-founded ShaDO-MD, a nonprofit that helps students explore healthcare careers through shadowing and mentorship.
Ayesha Ahmad is a recent computer science grad and native New Yorker who believes digital access is core to an equitable world. She's drawn to every side of product, from UX to development, and spends her free time hunting down the city's most unique bagel flavors.
Moustapha Diankha is a rising senior at Columbia University studying Computer Science. He currently works as an intern with Columbia's Industrial Engineering & Operations Research department.
Shreeya Chand is a computer science student at USC interested in full-stack engineering, machine learning, and their applications to social good. She also sings, hikes, and reviews books on Goodreads.
India Daniel is an NYU Computer Science grad and Robotics Software Engineer who spent the past two iterations of her ASL Translator project solving a problem close to her heart: making sign language easier to learn without a human instructor. In her spare time, she's building a trash-collecting robot with friends to help restore dignity to under-maintained parks in her community.
Ivory Le is a Lehigh University alum who came to PIL to be part of a community that genuinely cares about the same things she does. She's a self-described foodie who loves exhibitions, good coffee, and music of all kinds, from festivals to jazz clubs.
Jessica Belasoto is a computer science graduate from the University at Buffalo. Her time as a teaching assistant gave her the chance to give back to the communities that helped her as an aspiring software engineer, and she was looking forward to doing the same for PIL's nonprofit partners.
Britney Ngaw is a Brooklyn-based technologist and graduate student at Cornell Tech interested in equitable access to urban amenities and consumer protection. She works in AI governance at a fintech startup, and her graduate research focuses on improving advocates' responses to AI-mediated intimate partner violence. She's also a passionate watcher and producer of queer independent films.
Salia Nahshal studied Computer Science and Education Studies at Barnard College, and spent much of her college years volunteering with Project Tutors through Columbia Community Impact, working with third graders in Harlem. She now builds AI-native products at Arklex AI, owning product design and contributing across the stack. She joined PIL to bring that same craft to organizations solving problems that actually matter to people's lives.
That's the Class of 2026! Fifteen fellows, fifteen different paths into tech, and one summer spent building. We're grateful to each of them, and excited for what comes next.
Stay tuned for more on the projects they built and the nonprofits they partnered with this summer.