ABOUT

Pelkins was born in Limbe – a seaside city in the South West Region of Cameroon. With over 300 native languages and diverse climatic zones, Cameroon is nicknamed: "Africa in miniature". The experience of growing up in Cameroon's diversity gave Pelkins a global interest from childhood. This interest led him to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from where he graduated in 2018 with a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, concentrating in Robotics. Pelkins is passionate about leveraging the fourth industrial revolution to solve some of the world's most challenging issues. He has two years of experience using artificial intelligence to improve sensing capabilities for autonomous vehicles and has patented autonomous sensing technologies. In his junior year of college, Pelkins started a tech-enabled agribusiness in his native Cameroon that is empowering over 500 farmers. He is currently pursuing his interest in tech entrepreneurship through the dual MS/MBA program at Harvard Business School and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

LEADERSHIP

Africa Learning Circle

Co-founder

Co-founder 

CassVita Inc. is a tech-enabled agribusiness operating in Cameroon and the US that specializes in transforming cassava into high quality flours with the ultimate goal of industrializing Africa and empowering farming communities. 

The Africa Learning Circle (ALC) is the innovation and entrepreneurship arm of MIT's African Students' Association devoted to principled entrepreneurship with a rigorous study of the African continent. The ALC boasts of three companies/organizations operating in Cameroon, Nigeria, the US, and Ghana. 

TECHNICAL WORK

Engineering Program Manager

Leveraged Azure to improve security and authentication experience for Microsoft Advertising users

NUBIA: NeUral Based Interchangeability Assessor

Machine Learning Side-Project

Created a novel, state-of-the-art metric for evaluating similarity for text generation

Self-Driving Car Engineer

Patented a novel methodology for calibrating radars for self-driving cars which remarkably reduced calibration time from 8 hours to under 10 minutes

Relationship Between Wind Velocity and Orientation, and Faults in Electrical Network

Machine Learning Researcher

Made recommendations for prediction of instances of faults in the French electrical network using wind velocity and orientation data

3D Printing Assisted Fabrication of Soft Robotic Hand with Embedded Soft Electronic Circuits

Undergraduate Researcher and Inventor 

Invented a novel approach for embedding printed, elastic circuits in soft robotic devices that won first prize in Soft Robotics competition organized by Harvard

Effect of Inclination and Distance of Stop Sign on Accuracy of Learning and Non-learning Algorithms

Class Project

Investigated the effectiveness of different vision processing algorithms on the ability of a self-driving car to recognize stop signs

PRESS

Feature on Harvard MS/MBA front page

News feature on front page of MIT website

Post feature by the U.S. Embassy in Yaounde

MIT student reflects on her internship experience at CassVita

Interview (in French) by Cameroon Business Today

Blog feature about CassVita on MIT Admissions website

Contribution towards revamping MIT ASA into award winning student organization

CassVita invited for partnership with word's leading exporter of phosphate fertilizers

AWARDS

• Harvard Innovation Labs Social Impact Fellowship Fund | Harvard University

• Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

  • $90K scholarship to support graduate education

  • Selected among 30 Fellows from a pool of over 2,200 applicants

• Albert G. Hill Prize | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Suzanne Berger Award for Future Global Leaders | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• International Soft Robotics Design Competition First Prize | Harvard University John A. Paulson School 

• Guistwhite Scholar | Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

• National Best Student | Cameroon General Certificate of Education Advanced Level

PATENTS & CERTIFICATIONS

• Radar Calibration Systems and Methods. P043767-US-NP (003.1622). Filed: 09/05/17. Published: 03/07/19.

• Design for Six Sigma Green Belt Certification
   

 SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS & PRESENTATIONS

• National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Johns Hopkins University Post-grad Panel. Online event. (November 9, 2020). 

• PD Soros webinar for MBA applicants, Online event (July 29, 2020).

• Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, Vancouver, BC (December 13 - 14, 2019) - presented side-project paper at Learning Meaningful Representations of Life workshop

• Harvard Africa Business and Investment Forum, Cambridge, MA (November 9, 2019)

• MIT SciTech Conference (IdeaThon Mentor), Cambridge, MA (April 19 - 21, 2019) - organized by MIT Arab Students' Organization

• MIT Africa Innovate Conference, Cambridge, MA (April 14, 2019) - organized by MIT Sloan School of Management

• Deep Learning IndabaX (Keynote Speaker), Yaounde, Cameroon (April 2 - 4, 2019)

• Emerging Scholars Banquet (Keynote Speaker), Arlington, TX (December 1, 2015)

HOBBIES

NOTABLE MEETINGS