By Matt Shi, Kelly Clark, and Grace Pulliam
1. Tell me about yourself! What’s your background like?
I come from an electrical engineering background. I studied at the University of Wisconsin — Madison for my undergraduate and University of Southern California (USC) for my Masters.
2. How did you end up joining MOBI? What can you tell me about your role?
I was working with Dr. Gowri Sankar Ramachandran at USC on a project and I expressed interest in blockchain and mobility. Dr. Gowri suggested that I talk to someone at MOBI and I met Chris [Ballinger] at a meetup on campus. I talked with Chris and Griffin [Haskins] and applied to be a Fellow for the Supply Chain Working Group.
My role at MOBI has since expanded. I’m now a Fellow for technical product development, a Fellow for MOBI Working Groups, and the IT Manager for MOBI operations.
3. What experiences or interests led you to getting your degree in Electrical Engineering and Wireless Health Technology? How does this apply to what you do at MOBI?
My father is an electrical engineering professor, which initiated my interest in electrical engineering. I worked on circuits for a multi-source computed tomography project with Branden Walker at Morgridge Institute for Research during my undergrad. This got me to look at medical devices as an electrical engineer. I then went on to USC to get my Masters with a focus on wireless health technology. While studying at USC, I took a smart contract class and joined the Blockchain at USC club.
Courses related to computer networking, databases, and smart contracts provided me with a basic knowledge of blockchain. Likewise, my experience at Blockchain at USC gave me an introduction to the blockchain landscape as a whole.
4. You contributed to the Supply Chain (SC) standards. What was that experience like? How do these standards relate to other MOBI standards and MOBI’s overall mission?
I joined the SC WG as a fellow to support the Working Group Lead and was able to see the whole process from the forming of the group to the completion of the standards. The Supply Chain Working Group has been a good collaborative experience for me. It is new for me to see stakeholders from different backgrounds (vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, consulting, technology providers, blockchain protocols) working together. Applying blockchain in the supply chain is still a largely novel concept so there was a wealth of new use cases discussed in the beginning of the working group, many of which didn’t make it into the final standard. It’s always exciting to hear member organization representatives provide insights from their internal discussions, their Proofs of Concept (PoCs), and their working process.
The Supply Chain Standard is the summary of knowledge shared by all stakeholders in the working group. Together with other MOBI standards, SC Standards provide a recommendation to the industry on how data should be exchanged in the digital age as blockchain-based infrastructures become more common. The standards also discuss potential use cases to be explored further in the future.
5. What can you tell me about how the MOBI Web3 Technology Stack works? What are the different parts?
MOBI Web3 Technology Stack is the summary of MOBI’s primary initiatives. It stacks the initiatives together in a layered view to illustrate what MOBI is doing, what MOBI is about, and how our vision for the New Economy of Movement is expected to play out.
MOBI Standards provide the data schemas for information exchange and ensure interoperability. mobiNET provides the interoperable infrastructure for the connected mobility ecosystem. Citopia provides the platform interface and business logic for the decentralized mobility applications, enabling usage-based transactions and MOBI Trusted Trip track and trace.
