As a Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz, Shereen Oraby was on the cutting edge of research in Natural Language Processing. Now she is working on developing machine learning models for one of the world’s best-known virtual assistants.
In 2012, seven female students from the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz were admitted to a unique scholarship program at eBay. Eight years later, four of these students can call themselves inventors.
Sina Farsiu graduated with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Baskin School of Engineering in 2005. Now he runs his own Vision and Image Processing Lab at Duke University.
Electrical engineering undergraduate alumna Olivia Oswald (‘14), shares how engaging in internships and design projects while she was a student provided her with the experience she needed to acquire a job at Tesla, where she is currently a Sr. Technical Program Manager.
Degree Program: Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering
Graduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Barbara
Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Hometown: Fresno, California
“I think for any entrepreneur you just have to be ready that it’s going to be tougher than you think, but at the end of the day, even if you fail, you’re going to learn so much…. it’s going to be so hard, so be ready for that, but it’s, it’s worth the ride.”
Degree Program: B.S., Bioengineering, M.S., Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology
Graduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Biomolecular Engineering
Hometown: Huntington Beach, CA
“Currently, my project is engineering zymomonas mobilis, a unique organism that has a specific metabolic pathway that helps increase the production of biofuels, specifically ethanol and butanol… Fossil fuels are quickly becoming depleted and are very toxic, so if we were able to find a sustainable synthetic source of fuel, it would be extremely beneficial for overall environmental health.”