Student Profile: George Boateng '16
Dartmouth students choose to do many different things over their spring breaks, but George Boateng ’16 ended his in a unique way. Boateng traveled to the 7th Annual Clinton Global Initiative University conference in Arizona, a forum where student leaders, youth organizations and experts discuss and develop solutions to various societal challenges.
This year marked the conference’s first Code-a-thon, where teams enter a coding competition that involves developing application prototypes that address global health issues. Boateng’s team, MediText, won the competition with an app that reminded patients when they needed to pick up the drugs they needed for an illness.
“The goal [of the Codeathon] was to build an app that promoted medical adherence in developing countries,” Boateng said.
Boateng, who is from Ghana, has also shown innovation with his start-up project iSWEST (Innovating Solutions with Engineering, Science and Technology). The program encourages high school students in Ghana to innovate. Last year, Boateng planned to go home to work on iSWEST, but was unable to acquire funding to do so. Instead, he coordinated with friends in Ghana to admit 15 students for a training program to develop their physics, science and engineering skills.
For the Code-a-thon, Boateng initially tried to acquire funding through the Council on Student Organizations and the Newcomb Institute. He was ultimately successful after reaching out to the Dickey Center for International Understanding. The Dickey Center normally doesn’t fund projects like his, Boateng said, but it awarded him discretionary funds to send him to Arizona.
In a reflection he wrote for the Dickey Center, Boateng noted his excitement when former President Bill Clinton, the founder of the conference, shook his hand and congratulated him backstage after MediText won.
On campus, Boateng fuels his technological interests through Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering and research in the Dartmouth Robotics Lab. He also served as a teaching assistant in the Thayer School of Engineering’s machine shop. The Code-a-thon, he said, challenges “students who are passionate about addressing all kinds of challenges.” He rose to the task and hopes to attend the competition again next year in a continuous quest to find solutions to world problems.