Achuna Ofonedu is doing excellent work in artificial intelligence and software development entrepreneurship. He is a Software Engineer at Noblis, an independent, non-profit organization that develops STEM-related products for federal agencies. He is also the founder and owner of Soul Cloud, LLC, a startup software development company that delivers mobile apps to users across the globe.
So far, his company has released three apps in the last five months, including: Bible Chat - Torch: an artificial intelligence (AI) powered bible study tool that enables meaningful conversations with the Word of God, helping people deepen their knowledge and faith; Doc AI: a document chatbot leveraging semantic search, vector embeddings, and optical character recognition to extract, transform, and load information from PDFs and websites for advanced document Q&A capabilities; and TasteBud: An AI-powered recipe generator that gives recipe ideas and instructions based on the ingredients a user inputs.
Recently, artificial intelligence has gained more momentum and popularity in the consumer-based realm, where developers are looking to integrate this technology into new and existing products for increases in product efficiency/effectiveness, in addition to benefiting the consumer experience in general. Ofonedu sees AI as an integral component to software development in the future—especially with mobile applications—and is inspired to continue developing software that integrates this technology as the market continues to grow.
This interest in artificial intelligence and in developing integrative software systems stems from his time as a student at The Catholic University of America. Ofonedu earned his B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics in May 2022, followed up with a M.S. in Computer Science in 2023. During his time here, he was involved in numerous research projects and published several papers with support from faculty. He worked closely with Dr. Lin-Ching Chang in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and with Dr. Ravi Kalpathy and Dr. Kiran R. Bhutani (Chair) in the Department of Mathematics.
In regard to his experience as a student, Ofonedu said, “The School of Engineering—alongside its amazing professors—prepared me with the knowledge and skills to create and publish software.” Through the focused instruction, as well as in the opportunities to assist in research with tenured faculty, Ofonedu developed a strong interest in research and development. He also developed many related skills that have led to his success in software development and entrepreneurship. He was happy to share his experience at the School of Engineering and looks forward to continuing to apply his knowledge and expertise in entrepreneurial software development going forward.
For more information on Soul Cloud, LLC and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, please visit the following websites:
https://www.soulcloudcenter.com/
https://engineering.catholic.edu/eecs/index.html