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Lehua Sparrow: Alumna
Degree Program: Computer Science, B.S.
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Hometown: Makawao, Hawaii“I was always good at math and science growing up. I found comfort knowing that there is a solution in numbers, formulas, or algorithms.”
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Evan Peterson: Alumnus
Degree Program: Master of Science, Electrical Engineering (2016)
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Electrical Engineering
Hometown: Sebastopol, California“If you had talked to me three years ago, I doubt I would’ve expected I’d end up where I am, but I’d wager most people would say the same about where their career takes them.”
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Kateryna Voitiuk: Alumna and Graduate Student
Degree Program: Network and Digital Technology B.A.
Graduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Computer Science and Engineering“Being a computer engineer you can have a lot of choices, whether it’s directly related to computers and making them better and programming applications that do necessary things or whether it’s doing biology, chemistry, physics.”
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George Leece: Alumnus
Degree Program: Electrical Engineering, B.S.
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Electrical Engineering
Hometown: Chico, CA“[Being in the Army] definitely was an experience that opened my eyes to a lot of different opportunities and experiences that you can’t find anywhere else, I would say. In addition to that, finishing my time there, I was able to go back to UC Santa Cruz, to finish something that I had wanted to do.”
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Mark McDonald: Alumnus
Degree Program: Ph.D., Electrical Engineering
Graduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: BSE Duke University, MSEE North Carolina State University
Department: Electrical Engineering“The most important thing a student needs to learn in their education is not to memorize this or that formula, or do certain calculations at this speed, but really to develop an intuitive understanding and knowledge of what they are learning about.”
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Francisco Beltran: Alumnus
Degree Program: P.h.D., Statistics
Graduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: Cal-State Bakersfield
Department: Applied Mathematics and Statistics (2014)
Hometown: Buttonwillow, California“The skills and lessons I learned at UC Santa Cruz have largely influenced the manner in which I approach my current research on a daily basis. The high standards for rigorous statistical analysis have carried forth into all aspects of my work.”
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Angela Ramirez: Graduate Student
Degree Program: Natural Language Processing M.S.
Undergraduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Department: Natural Language Processing
Hometown: Atwater, California“We’re getting real experts who work in the industry to show us how they use the technology and what they do with it. Getting that perspective is really cool.”
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David Lee: Faculty
Degree Program: Assistant Professor, Technology Management
Graduate Institution: Stanford University
Undergraduate Institution: California Institute of Technology
Department: Computational Media“I wanted to find a way to organize large numbers of people to support nonprofits. I knew that my research in crowd-sourcing, and in bringing people together to accomplish tasks, could help.”
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Robert Lund: Faculty
Graduate Institution: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Undergraduate Institution: Auburn University
Department: Professor and Department Chair, Statistics“What I do as a statistician is crunch the numbers. We take data, compare it to what a climatologist’s model predicts, and give them our conclusions and how sure we are of those conclusions.”
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Kenneth Caluya: Graduate Student
Degree Program: Ph.D., Applied Mathematics
Graduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: UC Riverside
Department: Applied Mathematics
Hometown: Phillipines“I’m mentoring an undergrad right now and what I realized over the course of working with him is the importance of giving students support. My professors and older grad students always gave me that support so it feels good for me to pay that forward.”
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Sabina Tomkins: Graduate Student
Degree Program: Ph.D., Technology and Information Management
Graduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: NYU
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Hometown: Seattle“I’m working on this human trafficking project. The broad question was whether environmental events affect human traffickers. We found an increase in mentions of certain ethnicities after hurricanes in these ads, especially ethnicities from Caribbean countries.”
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Austin King: Graduate Student
Degree Program: Natural Language Processing M.S.
Graduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Department: Natural Language Processing
Hometown: Sunnyvale, CA“It’s amazing hearing from people who are working on NLP now — for example the professor teaching my five o’clock class is teaching at five because he’s working with the technology during the rest of the day. I feel lucky to have these people teaching us.”
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Preet Kaur: Alumna
Degree Program: Biomolecular Engineering, B.S. and Bioinformatics, B.S.
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Biomolecular Engineering“Some of my closest friends are from bioengineering and bioinformatics. Seeing my friends succeed and being a part of that success is something I’m really proud of.”
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Keerthi Krishnan: Alumnus
Degree Program: B.S., Computer Science, minor in Applied Mathematics
Graduate Institution: Chapman University
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Computer Science and Engineering“Baskin [Engineering] gave me that forefront of knowledge that allowed me to excel in my graduate career.”
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Marcela Alfaro-Córdoba: New Faculty
Graduate Institution: Iowa State University, M.S., North Carolina State University, Ph.D.
Undergraduate Institution: Universidad de Costa Rica
Department: Statistics“It’s exciting to introduce the topic of statistics to people that have no prior knowledge or experience with the field. My goal is to motivate students to keep learning about the field of statistics.”
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Akhil Dixit: Graduate Student
Degree Program: Computer Science, Ph.D.
Graduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Undergraduate Institution: University of Pune, India
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Hometown: Pune, India“One highlight from the research I’ve done in my Ph.D. program is winning the ACM SIGMOD Student Research Competition in Amsterdam in 2019. It was a very exciting moment for me.”
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Evan Pepper: Alumnus
Degree Program: Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics, B.S.
Graduate Institution: University of Washington, working towards a Ph.D. in Molecular Engineering
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Biomolecular Engineering“The ACE program is what motivated me to continue my involvement in academia and what encouraged me to pursue a career in education to hopefully become a professor one day.”
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Manping Jia: Graduate Student
Degree Program: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ph.D.
Graduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz, University of Science and Technology, Beijing (M.S., Materials Science)
Undergraduate Institution: University of Science and Technology, Beijing
Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Hometown: Datong, China“My dream job would be one where I could develop wearable bioelectronic devices for health monitoring.”
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Ikenna Anigbogu: Alumnus
Degree Program: Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics, B.S.
Undergraduate Institution: UC Santa Cruz
Department: Biomolecular Engineering
Hometown: El Cerrito, CA“Bioengineering really exposed me to the humanitarian side of science, which is something I have always wanted to be involved in.”
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Sidney Robinson: Undergraduate
Degree Program: Computer Science, B.S.
Undergraduate Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Department: Computer Science“Change is coming, and I’m excited for it.”
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