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Planning for the summer after his sophomore year, Louis Jenkins had focused his efforts on securing an industry internship. However, in what he describes as “sheer coincidence,” Louis was forwarded a departmental email that would alter not only his summer plans, but his overall career trajectory. The email highlighted the NSF summer Research Experience for… Continue reading Coincidence, Concurrence, and Careers

Originally a pre-med student at Loyola University, Laurynas Kalesinskas had envisioned his undergraduate degree as a stepping-stone to attend medical school. An interest in research and a passion to create change in healthcare led him to computational research. Fascinated by the projects he worked on, Laurynas shifted his focus. Graduating with a Bioinformatics and Biology… Continue reading From Pre-med to Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics

Yisu Remy Wang was sophomore at Tufts University when he enrolled in Professor Kathleen Fisher’s programming languages course.  In that course, Professor Fisher exposed students to some areas of current research which sparked Yisu’s interest and curiosity.  Yisu spoke with Professor Fisher and she agreed to act as his research advisor.  This was the beginning… Continue reading Proofs, Privacy, and Programming

June Chen’s passion for learning was abundantly evident when she arrived as an undergraduate at Rice University. She pursued a triple major in electrical engineering (BSEE), mathematics (BA), and medieval and early modern studies (BA), and she sought additional opportunities to learn outside of her coursework. June realized that working on open-ended research problems was… Continue reading Texas to Tokyo: A Path to Graduate School

Alex Ozdemir is intensely curious about understanding how things work.  Perhaps this curiosity is what drove him to pursue a self-designed major in “Computational, Mathematical, and Physical Theory” at Harvey Mudd College.  After completing two summer internships in industry, Alex decided to try research.  He began seeking research opportunities around campus. He remembered enjoying the… Continue reading A Drive to Understand

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Lillian Tsai had always assumed that a normal career path for a computer scientist involved working at a company or, perhaps, launching a start-up. That was the path that she imagined for herself when she enrolled at Harvard University and chose to major in computer science.   Lillian credits her… Continue reading Beyond the Valley

When Julia Woodward began her first year at the University of Florida, she did not know that her interests in design, art, and computing would ultimately merge to form an exciting path in computing research. During an introductory meeting for the Digital Arts and Science major, several professors gave presentations on  their work and research… Continue reading From Passions to Projects: How Interest in Design and Art led to Computing Research

While Gloria Kim’s interest in computing started in the classroom, her curiosity in deeper questions and desire to learn quickly took her outside of any curriculum. While taking an Introduction to Parallel Programming course with Prof. Vivek Sarkar at Rice University, Gloria found the topics led her to questions that fell outside the scope of… Continue reading Driven by Curiosity