Home | Danahhan

Hi! I'm Danah, a software engineer based out of NYC.

At Microsoft, I bring emerging AI research into the Teams product - merging new developments with existing video calling technology.

I specialize in building impactful products, and I excel at leading cross-functional teams.

Outside of work, I spend my time improving my conversational Spanish and surfing.

Magic 8-Ball

Built a Vite web app with a Flask backend that uses Substrate LLM (internal Microsoft language model) to mimic a Magic-8 ball.

Album Cover Remixer

Built a React web app that uses ChatGPT and Dall-E APIs to reimagine album covers specified by users as clay sculptures.

Demo speed is impacted by the web app's use of GPT-3 and rate-limiting.

Mixed Reality Devices Business Development

Facilitated a Confidential Information Technology Agreement (CITA) between Microsoft and a Fortune 500 company for a deal critical to enabling augmented reality experiences at high-speed and bandwidth. Gained exposure to the ecosystem strategy for wireless communications, and to the full Mixed Reality device portfolio.

AI Research Incubation

The Mixed Reality & AI Research team based out of the United Kingdom has an ongoing need for engineering support to bring their research developments into product. Led this workstream for a number of greenfield research projects with applications in the video communications space, including:

Responsibilities involved:

Rapid onboarding onto technical projects with research whitepapers
Managing the cross-team relationship ecosystem & strategy alignment
Costing out incoming partner team asks
- Identifying features needed now vs. ineffective investments of developer time
- Helping research team stay focused on MVP

GDPR Compliance Delivery

Tapped by engineering leadership team to deliver a GDPR compliance requirement discovered 3 weeks before Satya Nadella's announce of the Avatars in Teams product release into private preview at Microsoft Ignite.

Fast-tracked meeting with Microsoft legal and data privacy counsel; pulled together a technical design spec review within 24h. Feature delivery required rapid onboarding onto a new API stack with limited available documentation.

Direct management chain (manager to VP) noted there was no one else on the team who would have been able to deliver this feature on this timeline.

New Avatar Templates in Microsoft Teams

React, Typescript, C#, Unity, Figma

Designed and created avatar templates that are seen by millions and equipped by hundreds of thousands of users every day.

Self-identified the need to rework the default avatar templates by analyzing customer research and user feedback.
Led the delivery of a new set of avatar templates in time for public preview across a cross-functional team of artists, product managers, designers, and engineers.

Generative Artifacts

Built an Apple Vision Pro app with a team of Microsoft employees that generates 3D objects on the fly based on user prompts.

Personally implemented all UI & gesture components in the app and connected the frontend to the backend API that invokes the OpenAI Shap-E model that produces the returned generated artifacts.

Built an iOS app from scratch focused on language learning. App allows users to translate phrases and save them as index cards that can be referenced later for study and memorization via spaced repetition.

practica

Avatar Postcard App

Built a React Native mobile app that enables users to create a “postcard” picture for their avatars with the background being one of the Microsoft Mesh office locations.

Some screens require additional UI polish, but the goal of this project was to build a fully functional mobile app with an Azure backend.

Spotify Collaborative Playlist App

Built a collaborative playlist app with a team of Dartmouth students leveraging geolocation and the Spotify API.

Worked with a team of students at Dartmouth to support in the development of an iPad application conceptualized by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center researchers.

Personally responsible for implementation of the homepage.

Dartmouth Research iPad Application

Cosmos Language Clubs

Built an online language learning platform where members were paired in clubs of 4 people with whom they learned their heritage language.

Grew the business to 142 paying members over a year.

füd Mobile App

Built a mobile app designed to let businesses post discounts for surplus food in their inventory.

Pitched at Dartmouth's annual entrepreneurship competition, received funding of $2,500. Funding was partially used to outsource development.

Ultimately sold on marketplace flippa.com.