CSpotlight: Navigating Real World Successes

Why did you choose to pursue a degree in computer science specifically at the University of Minnesota?

Before coming to the United States, I went to school for software engineering and applied mathematics for two years. When I came here, I wanted to keep going in that same major because I love technology and anything related to technology is a huge passion for me. I chose the University of Minnesota because of the undergraduate research program that I was lucky enough to participate in this summer. 

How did you become interested in computer science? What are your specific interests within the field?

My interest for tech started early on in my childhood with the movies that I used to watch. I always thought sitting in front of a black screen and writing code was interesting. I then decided to do that as a profession. My specific interest is machine learning, which is a big field right now. 

Tell us more about your internship experiences.

I do not have any internship experience, but I work full-time as a data scientist. I build machine learning models for prediction and classification tasks. For example, predicting the demand of a certain product.

Congratulations on your CS&E Scholarship! How will this scholarship impact your academic and extracurricular work?

Right now, I mainly rely on financial aid to pay for tuition and housing. Obtaining this scholarship has made paying tuition much easier. Thanks to that, I can reduce my working hours this semester and focus on my education.

Are you involved in any student groups? What inspired you to get involved? 

I am involved in the UMN Solar Vehicle Project. I joined during my transfer year, because when they came and did their presentation, I thought what they were doing was cool. We basically are  building a car from scratch. I gained a lot of experience from it. 

What do you hope to contribute to the computer science community at the University?

I have a full-time job as a data scientist. Hopefully with this, I can help my peers navigate the working environment, because from what I have seen, what we learn here at the University of Minnesota is relevant in the real world. However, it is completely different from what we do on the job. That is something that you discover through internships, but I hope I can give that kind of advice to my peers. 

Have you been involved with any research on campus?

Last summer, I did the AI for Earth Summer School, which focused on using the capabilities of AI to help with environmental problems. There were several projects during the research project. The one that I specifically worked on with two more people was about predicting the chemical properties of molecules using graph neural networks. 

What advice do you have for incoming computer science students?

I would say to believe and work for it, because right now with the rise of AI, there is a lot of gossip about computer science being useless, but that is not my experience so far. If you do your part of the work and put in the effort, you will always make it.