Technical Leadership Accelerator, Kode With Klossy 2026
I am Inaba Amanat, an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at the University of Texas at Austin pursuing a minor in Robotics. My interests include medical robotics, autonomous systems, and research that applies engineering to real-world problems.
Technical leadership is important to me because engineering is not just about building projects. The truth is, knowing how to explain the hardware and software behind a project, as well as the motivation driving it, is just as important as creating it. TLA presents a great opportunity to apply what I learn through the program's learning labs to communities I am already a part of while becoming a more effective leader in research and engineering spaces.
Baseline Reflection: When code frustrates me, my default communication pattern is to keep the problem to myself and spend time dissecting it on my own. I sometimes dwell on an issue longer than I should because I feel like I ought to be able to solve it independently before asking for help.
The stakeholder I'm least likely to consider in my technical work is my future self and anyone who relies on my documentation. It's easy to get caught up in perfecting the technical aspects of a project and overlook clear documentation and organization.
If I were going to pick one technical community to make better this summer, it would be my Freshman Research Initiative medical robotics research group because I want to make it easier for new freshmen to learn, contribute ideas, understand core robotics concepts, and feel supported as they develop their technical skills.
When I started this program, I focused on documenting and improving my own technical work. My first artifact was a master reference document for the haptic piano I built through being apart of a freshmen research initiative because I thought good engineering meant understanding every detail myself. As the program progressed, I began looking beyond my own projects and asking how engineering could make a community run more effectively. That shift led me to Longhorn Neurotech, the organization that has shaped much of my freshman engineering experience. For my Impact Project, I built a Discord attendance bot that streamlined our existing attendance process. Our previous QR code system also updated a Google Sheet, but it slowed down check in and required members to use a separate system before joining the meeting. By integrating attendance directly into Discord, the platform our members already use every day, check in became faster, more convenient, and automatically recorded in the spreadsheet. This experience taught me to recognize gaps in engineering workflows and build practical solutions that people will actually use. Today, I measure success not only by the software I create, but by how much easier I can make collaboration, leadership, and everyday operations for the people around me.
Thank you for following along on my journey!