Emerging Leaders Bring Talent and Innovation to Georgia CTSA's AppHatchery Summer Internship Program

This summer, the Georgia CTSA AppHatchery hosted an exceptional group of interns who had the opportunity to contribute to vital initiatives and impactful projects. This is the internship program's fourth year, which has become an essential part of the success of the AppHatchery program.

"Working at the intersection of digital tools and healthcare, we see a clear gap between good ideas and things that actually work in a hospital. Most of the effort to make a project succeed involves learning that gap, and that’s exactly where our interns live. They spend the Summer on the floor, watching clinicians deal with real situations, interviewing them, talking with real patients," shares Santiago Arconada Alvarez, MS, Georgia CTSA AppHatchery Co-Director.

We thank our interns for spending their summer with us. Keep reading to meet these outstanding emerging leaders and learn more about their experiences with our team.

Meet Our Interns

Noynica Ahuja
Noynica joined after graduating from Georgia Tech’s MS in Human-Computer Interaction (MS-HCI). Drawn to UX through her love of art, technology, and people, Noynica became especially interested in thoughtful design after seeing how frustrating supposedly “easy” technology could be for her grandparents. During her internship, she brought her strength in storytelling through design to Vocalis, a project focused on augmenting interpreter services to help healthcare professionals communicate more effectively with patients who speak different languages. Her work gave her the opportunity to explore conversational UX, conduct on-site ethnographic research, and think deeply about how design can support both patients and care teams in high-stakes healthcare environments.

Sam Cutrone
Sam holds a BS in Marketing from Seton Hall University and an MBA in Technology Commercialization and Product Management from Georgia Tech. Drawn to marketing for its mix of creativity, psychology, data, and business, Sam brought curiosity and a strong customer focus to her work, using everything from 1:1 conversation to emerging trends to better understand what people need. During her internship, she worked with the AppHatchery team to explore how Fabla could grow, including expanding its use in Ecological Momentary Assessment research across institutions and identifying future applications that could create value for researchers and patients alike.

Dipthi Dinesh
Dipthi is an incoming second-year student in Georgia Tech’s MS in Human-ComputerInteraction (MS-HCI), specializing in Interactive Design, with a BFA in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art. With a background in visual design, branding, and motion, Dipthi brought a sharp eye for detail and a thoughtful, systems-oriented approach to UX. During her internship, she worked on improving the Researcher Dashboard behind Fabla, our flagship EMA research product, with a focus on participant adherence and incentive tracking for CRCs. Her work spanned the full UX process, from research and problem framing to high-fidelity feature design, while giving her the opportunity to deepen her experience in research and HCI.

Caroline Kadzakalowa
Carol is a Management Information Systems graduate from the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS). Drawn to front-end development because of how quickly it turns ideas into something people can see and interact with, Carol brought a strong interest in creating intuitive, user-friendly experiences to her work on Fabla, an audio diary-based medical and psychological research app. During her internship, she helped improve the front-end experience for both researchers and participants while bringing a thoughtful, user-centered perspective to the project.

Priya Patel
Priya joins us with a Master's in UX Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BS in Computer Science from Texas A&M University. With a background in software engineering and a curiosity for the “why” behind product decisions, Priya brought a thoughtful mix of technical knowledge, design thinking, and problem-solving to her internship. She contributed across several AppHatchery projects, including studies focused on concussion recovery and fear of public speaking, a mobile tool for Graves’ disease measurements, and an AI chatbot for diabetes education. Her work spanned user journeys, wearable integration, usability testing, participant experience, research, and technical scoping, while giving her the opportunity to deepen her product thinking in real-world healthcare contexts where usability, trust, data quality, and research rigor all matter.

George Tembo
George is a Computer Engineering graduate from the University of Livingstonia. Drawn to the behind-the-scenes side of technology, George brought a strong interest in backend development, system logic, data flow, architecture, and performance to his internship. During his time with AppHatchery, he worked on technical onboarding for Fabla, our EMA research platform, building a deeper understanding of how complex research tools are designed, supported, and scaled under real-world constraints. His internship gave him the opportunity to strengthen his systems thinking and explore what it takes to build technology that doesn’t just work but works reliably and effectively.

Team outing on the Atlanta Beltline — good conversations, great company, and a little time outside the office. From left: Sam, Dipthi, Krisha, Ria, Noynica, Priya, Tulika, Upasana, Prasshanna, Yago

Looking Ahead

The contributions of these individuals exemplify the innovative spirit and dedication that the AppHatchery fosters in its interns. Their work not only advances their careers but also impacts clinical and translational science.

Arconada Alvarez shares that, "We’ve now had more than 20 interns come through the program, and several have gone on to jobs at Apple, Google, and Tesla. I see us training research software engineers who carry with them an understanding of what it actually takes to get science out of the lab and into people’s hands, wherever they land next."

About the Georgia CTSA AppHatchery

The AppHatchery is a mobile app consulting and development service offered by the Georgia CTSA. This group is a multi-disciplinary team that creates patient-centered mobile apps for healthcare through strategy, user research, design, software development, and clinical study.

Learn more about the AppHatchery on the Georgia CTSA website

Visit the AppHatchery site for information about the latest projects