CSpotlight: Opportunities Studying Abroad
What made you decide to study abroad? Why did you choose to study computer science specifically at the University of Minnesota?
I wanted to study abroad because there weren't many opportunities to study Computer Science in Serbia. There was the Belgrade university that offers a Software Engineering major but it doesn’t quite focus on the science aspect. Also, I enjoy how the University of Minnesota allows students to choose their own courses while getting a degree in something they are interested in.
When I was applying to colleges, the University of Minnesota really stood out to me because of a few professors, one being Steven McCamant. His research focused on program analysis techniques for software security, which was super interesting to me since I was a huge fan of the show “Mr. Robot.” I was always curious about cybersecurity and hive defense, which were major parts of the show’s plot. So, I was excited to meet him to learn more about software defense. Currently, I am taking CSCI 4271W with him so that should be fun. There are also other professors like him such as Daniel Kluver, who I talked to about his research in recommendation algorithms in my freshman year.
How did you become interested in computer science?
I would say elementary school when my mom made me go to a coding school in Belgrade. I hated the idea at first since all I wanted to be was in politics at the time. I even went on live television at the age of 9 and said I was going to be the next president. Then, that’s where I began to appreciate the virtual world. I did a project that same year making 2D tank games, which I was very amazed that something like that was possible with ease. On TV, programmers usually have some weird black and green screens with a lot of nonsense.
Later, in high school I continued my education by learning the basics like C and solving little puzzles: find the way out of the maze or the largest rectangle in the matrix without brute force.
Tell us more about your internship at Allianz Life and CodeLabs. What kind of projects did you work on?
The CodeLabs internship was unpaid and I was a freshman. This was in 2020 when covid first started. We were all assigned a mentor from big companies to work on small 1 month projects. My mentor was from Microsoft, Aditi Kabra. It was a great place to see what working in teams was like. We used tools like Github extensively. The biggest reward from that program was meeting all the mentors from different companies and networking with them. They even had mock interviews with them which were great for the real ones I had later.
The Allianz Life internship was a lot more professional. I worked on an actual project for one of the Fortune 100 companies. Colin Duke and Ryan Feeny, my manager and my manager's manager, were a huge help. They were part of the Technical Analysis team that created tools to automate error checking in the data typed on people’s life insurance. For instance, somebody getting paid $10,000 a month instead of $10.
My project here was creating a tool that was checking that information based on plan codes, which are rules on how specific insurance is supposed to be handled. Different states have different laws. My managers were supportive and as such, I had a lot of freedom to explore the company and work with different departments. They inspired me later in the internship to come up with some ideas of my own, like automating query accessing. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to finish this project during the internship
What are your plans after graduation?
I want to go to London and live with my sister. I probably will be looking to work at a financial giant like she is doing right now. They have a position for everything from data analysis to web development and Cyber security so I think I’ll be able to explore my interests further in such a space.