Career

Software 2 Course Grader

During the 2021-2022 school year, I worked as a TA for the computer science Software 2 course. I completed this course in Spring 2021 and was invited by my professor to apply for this position. I held weekly office hours, graded assignments and gave feedback, and helped students during lab meetings.

Summer 2021 Research Experience: North Carolina State University

As mentioned in my G.O.A.L.S Original Inquiry section, I spent the summer of 2021 working as a researcher for the Socially-Relevant Computing And Analytics Research Experience for Undergraduates program at North Carolina State University. In developing our independent research project, my group read related literature on topics such as machine learning, algorithmic bias, data transparency, and smart policing and compiled a literature review and annotated bibliography. We also collected/organized datasets and implemented three machine learning algorithms in Python. As part of our lab group, I presented weekly article critiques at lab meetings. At the end of the summer, we presented our results and findings in a twelve-page research paper, oral presentation, and poster presentation. A link to our poster can be found in the Artifacts section.

I also participated in an undergraduate panel on the computer science major experience for middle school and high school students and assisted in another student’s qualitative study that aimed to measure the usefulness of storyboarding as a planning technique for block based programming.

Summer 2022 Research Experience: Stony Brook University

Again, as mentioned in my G.O.A.L.S Original Inquiry section, I spent the summer of 2022 researching in the Data + Computing = Discovery REU at Stony Brook University. In this program, I worked alone with assistance and advice only from my mentor. I developed skills using R, Python, Jupyter Lab, and SQL. I also gained experience collecting data from the Twitter API and diving into primary literature.

My research focused on the phenomenon of people displaying the Ukraine flag emoji (🇺🇦) on Twitter in their names and bios. When Russia began invading Ukraine earlier this year, thousands of Twitter users began displaying this emoji in their names and bios as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine. I investigated the popularity of the trend and how has it changed over time, what types of people are participating in the trend (and who is not), and whether users displaying the flag were more likely to be connected to other users who also did so. My work was published in March 2023 in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, accessible here.

Russian Immersion at Middlebury Language Schools

I spent eight weeks of my 2023 summer in Middlebury, Vermont immersed in the world of Russian. Middlebury is a prestigious language school known for its “language pledge” where you pledge to leave your native language behind and exist solely in your target language (for me, Russian) for the duration of the program. I lived, breathed, sang all in Russian for all eight weeks. I increased my level of proficiency to from Advanced Low to Advanced Mid.