Vedant Subramanian

Shelters kept telling me the same thing: they needed shoes. After cold-calling ~50 shelters across DFW and hearing that ~70% ranked shoes among the biggest needs, I started Shelter Aid TX with my brother and a friend. I designed a shoe match system so donations aren't random; the right pairs go to the right shelters. This matching system is what sets us apart—we're not just collecting shoes, we're solving specific needs. As president, I run ops and partnerships to keep this system running efficiently. I'm currently training the next generation of leaders for the organization and we've set up a strong succession plan to ensure long-term impact.

At UPenn's M&TSI, our team kept circling one idea we loved: glasses that help with memory cues. We surveyed 60+ people and spoke with industry professionals including Raj Amin and a former Fort Worth VITAS Medical Director, plus a local nursing home director. We built sleek frames with bone conduction so names can be delivered even with some hearing loss, and a companion matching game to reinforce faces and objects. I co-led market research, financial modeling, and produced our marketing video.

I met Ronald at M&TSI and we instantly became best friends. After struggling through the program together, we knew we wanted to start something meaningful. During conversations, we both realized we had brothers who weren't very talkative and we were worried about their communication with our parents when they went to college. This shared concern sparked the idea for CampusLife, a family wellness tracker that focuses on connection over transactions. We coded tirelessly to create an app that gamifies healthy habits while helping families stay connected through support messages, care packages, and wellness monitoring.

Our athletics department wanted fuller stands, so in Advanced CS we built Rally. Students check in at games and earn more points for the less-attended ones. My favorite part was the redemption flow: our random code meant nothing. Staff just checked the moving seconds bar to make sure it wasn't a recording, then entered a preset code to deduct from the athletics budget.

I started my first YouTube channel when I was 9, just me, my guitar, and my iPad mini creating guitar tutorials and editing them with iMovie. Since then, I've explored many different channels: music, video game streaming, and more. Most recently, I launched YouTube and TikTok editing accounts. Vidrant Prod hit 364.5k lifetime views on YouTube, while my TikTok accounts Vidrant Prod and Vidrant Edits reached 265k+ and 100k+ views respectively.

I conducted a 1-on-1 research internship under Professor Sanket Mohapatra at IIM Ahmedabad, a former Senior Economist at the World Bank with expertise in international macroeconomics and trade policy. My research analyzed the macroeconomic effects of the 2025 US tariffs, specifically examining their impact on inflation, consumption, reshoring, and substitution patterns. The paper was published on SSRN.