Hi, I'm Joel. I have a passion for combating climate change, government, software development, and engineering.

I am working to bring a solar installation to Riverdale Country School, which will save 331 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent each year, save Riverdale money, supply backup power during outages, and provide live energy data for use in the science curriculum. I founded Students for Electric Buses, a club attempting to transition Riverdale’s bus provider to electric school buses. I also did research on organic solar cells at New York University’s Lee Lab.

I serve on Manhattan Community Board One’s Environmental Protection Committee (whose work includes planning Lower Manhattan’s climate resiliency projects), and the Youth & Education Committee. I am working with the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice and Street Vendor Project to enable street vendors to connect to the electrical grid instead of using gas generators, which would prevent 450 tons of gas from being burned annually per vendor and improve NYC’s air quality (see more). I am working to open new maker spaces in public schools to give kids the same opportunity to make that I had.

Among my software projects, Buseroo.com has helped students find which school bus goes to any address over 500 times, Homework Checker helps 1,000 students manage their homework, Focus for Google Docs helps over 400 people write without distractions, and LirongArt.com showcases my mom’s paintings.

Among my engineering projects, I made a Jacob’s ladder that acts as my alarm, waking me up every morning. I built a vending machine that serves snacks to people at school, a wooden pinball machine, Tesla coil, and various other devices. You can explore my projects in more depth below: