Four Columbia Engineers Make Forbes 30 Under 30 List

Ahmed Kord, a postdoctoral research scientist in the department of electrical engineering, was selected in the Science category, as one who is “inventing the future from the atom up.” Wireless devices require large, bulky magnetic materials to transmit and receive data at the same time, a fact that has hindered WiFi capacity in small, handheld electronics. Kord, who works in Professor Harish Krishnaswamy’s Columbia high-Speed and Millimeter-wave IC (CoSMIC) lab, was cited for his development of a “new class of magnet-less circulators, which are smaller and enable more applications.”

Josh Augustin '18 and Moawia Eldeeb '18 cofounded Pivot, a connected in-home gym. Listed in both the Consumer Technology 2020 category and Big Money group, the cofounders are among those “seizing the moment of a personalized digital revolution.” With seed funding, they built SmartSpot, a successful B2B forerunner of Pivot, which they sold to hundreds of gyms around the world, generating over $1 million in revenue. This past July, they closed a $17 million round of Series A funding and expect to launch a consumer version next year.

Selected as one of those “leading a technological and artistic revolution” in the Games category, Jasmine Roberts '14 works as a freelancer at Google Creative Lab and an adjunct professor at NYU. The Forbes list cited her as one of the first to prototype games on Google’s new Stadia cloud gaming service, which launched November 19. She is a former Unity Technologies XR software engineer and has taught Unity workshops with Girls in Tech and Girls Make Games. She is currently developing gaming curricula for Black Girls Code.