In the developed world, we often take the positive correlation between openness to trade and development for granted. After all, the world has seen the greatest amount of economic growth ever in this relatively short period of time in which global markets have been very accessible. There can be many factors attributed to this perspective on the near-universal association between trade and wealth, such as its simple, intuitive reasoning, a historical drive for developed nations to seek out beneficial trade opportunities, or perhaps even a general lack of awareness when it comes to how such enterprising attitudes may impact those living in entirely different civilizations. Whatever the reasoning may be, the reality is that global trade or openness to it is not as cut and dry as many would like to believe, nor does trade openness come as freely as one might expect, as certain conditions are needed in order to foster access to well-developed markets. It has been observed recently that the cost of doing trade, so to speak, has been increasing globally as certain state and nonstate actors push against the free trade model developed by the United States after World War II. It is with this challenge in mind that we explore the recent changes in the balance of global power dynamics that have led to a decline in the openness of the globalized economy. Saying this, we are not advocating for an end to "globalization", rather, this paper is meant to observe multiple potential frustrations to the current economic global order and the resulting fallout of trade among the world’s top economies.

StayWell is an app concept that revolutionizes how young adults manage their health information by “Putting the Self-Care in Healthcare.” Allowing users to track both their medical and wellness information in one place, StayWell will act as both a healthcare and self-care app. The main page is a customizable calendar with a pill tracker, habit tracker and appointment tracker. At the bottom of the page, there is a storage feature to hold all of the user’s medical information such as insurance cards, provider contact, lab results, and other documentation. This allows users to track all medical or self-care related information in one convenient app that is fully customizable to match their specific needs, whether it’s tracking a chronic condition or just striving to reach new fitness goals. Our product is currently available for pre-sale via our website which showcases mockups of the user interface. With proper funding we can begin the development of the app and release a beta version to our existing audience who have already signed up for the app pre-sale.

We are a group of three business students starting a hummus company rooted in health and transparency. Our business plan is to create homemade-style hummus with the most pure and nutritious ingredients to provide a viable snack option to a lacking market. Our distribution will be centered around farmers markets in our early stages, taking advantage of face-to-face interactions with customers to build our brand and reputation before expanding into grocery stores.

My creative project is a Python program designed to simulate a $100,000 stock portfolio using real data about the stock market. It runs continuously on my computer and executes the main body of the code once per day at 11:00 am AZ time. It will pull prices from the internet for all stocks in the S&P 500 between 07/01/2023 and now. Each day, the program outputs two .csv files showing the makeup of the portfolio and an aggregated list of all transactions that have taken place. The financial decisions are made using Modern Portfolio Theory and the Efficient Frontier model, balancing risk and maximizing the Sharpe ratio to create the most mathematically optimal portfolio. There is a lot of documentation available to users to show the process of the code through daily executions, how to install required packages, and ultimately how to use the program. It was designed as a simulation for this project but has the potential to be expanded beyond its current bounds and eventually become a legitimate algorithm trading bot.

Completed through Founders Lab, we started a business where college students are able to donate, rent, or buy clothing items that they can use for a variety of occasions. We wanted to redefine thrifting, with a focus specifically tailored to the needs and preferences of college students at an affordable cost.

Although many games have digital economies and some even allow players to trade their items with other players for real-world money, none have found quite the same level of success as Counter-Strike’s virtual economy, valued in the billions of dollars. Within this market, there exist cosmetic items that span from a just few cents to purchase to private deals for rare collector’s items that total well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars (McAdam, Boulton 2024). In this thesis, we will be exploring what exactly makes this virtual economy such a financial powerhouse as well as what factors contribute to the vast gulf in pricing seen in this fascinating market. Upon identifying these factors, we will see how they can be used to predict the pricing of skins that could eventually come to the game.