The Drexel 40 Under 40 program, published in Drexel Magazine, annually recognizes some of the University’s most promising, entrepreneurial, creative and inspiring alumni.
Two College of Computing & Informatics alumni – Iris Howley and Adit Gupta – were selected for this year’s class in recognition of their professional success, community involvement and all-around amazingness.
This year marks the 10th year of Drexel Magazine’s “40 Under 40” series. In reflecting over the past decade of featuring hundreds of alumni, Drexel Magazine states: “This procession of successful individuals in business and science, in public service, in academic pursuits, in charitable ventures and in artistic endeavors has proven, however, that one thing is constant: The influence of an experiential education remains as powerful as ever. Encore after encore, our honorees affirm the value of Anthony J. Drexel’s enduring vision to unite wisdom with experience, and action with impact.”
Howley, who earned her BS in computer science in 2008, is an assistant professor Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she conducts research at the research at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), artificial intelligence (AI) and the learning sciences. She is currently researching the design and deployment of interactive explainables for users of algorithmic systems in educational contexts with the support of an NSF grant. She credits Drexel’s five-year co-op program, combined with her participation in the STAR (Students Tackling Advanced Research) Fellowship program, with jumpstarting her career in computer science research. Read more about Iris Howley
Gupta, who is currently a PhD student in computer science at CCI, graduated in 2019 with a BS in software engineering. After seeing how the COVID-19 pandemic affected his parents’ convenience store, he and Westphal alum Tom Falzani (BS graphic design ’20) co-founded Lula, a startup that makes it possible for small stores with lots of inventory to quickly and easily participate with delivery services like GrubHub, DoorDash and Uber Eats. “We are democratizing eCommerce for convenience stores around the world, by connecting them with every delivery outlet online,” Gupta told Drexel Magazine. The concept for Lula was born from a Drexel club that Gupta and Falzani started centered around the digital tracking system known as blockchain. Lula raised nearly $1 million in pre-seed funding in March ’21 and another $5.5 million in seed funding in January ’22. Read more about Adit Gupta and Tom Falzani