"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."
"I would have never thought I would get an internship at NASA! It’s great... I focus on helping to develop the next level of air transportation in the U.S. and other parts of the world through NASA partnerships. If you heard of the concept of an “Air Taxi” then that sums it up."
"[NLP is] a new enough field that there are cool things for students and researchers to get involved with. A degree in NLP will help me focus on what I want to do."
"I’ve gotten a lot of opportunities at BSOE. It’s been really amazing. I was able to join a bioelectronics lab my sophomore year, and I’m still working in that lab."
"I grew up with computers, so choosing to go in that direction was pretty easy. But after spending two years in Japan I realized I love languages too and wanted to see if there was an overlap between linguistics and computer science. After doing some research I found natural language processing (NLP) and realized it was something I wanted to do."
"Getting into the lab was probably the best time out of my whole UCSC career... I felt like everything that I learned in class was finally playing out and I could learn things more hands-on."
"[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."
"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."
"I realized, being first generation American, that I value hard work. I value being persistent. I value being kind of gritty. So if someone tells me, I can't, I'm going to go ahead and do it. That's just me."
"I feel very fortunate and blessed to work with the people that I do, because everyone cares so much about the students and doing the right thing. They have made what I thought would be an impossible situation possible."
"Join as many orgs and clubs as interest you… because you will meet a lot of great people... It is really about the people that you know, how you carry yourself through and what kind of support system you have around yourself."
"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."
"I've had people come up to me and say, “your class is the reason I got an internship or a job offer,” and that is wonderful. It's definitely one of my prouder moments."
"It’s really nice to have professors who work in industry. At least half of our professors work in the field. It’s incredible hearing about how big companies are starting to use NLP."
I spent many years in the reading room when radiologists were reading and looking at the patient images and observing what their struggles are... I think that [my device] could be very instrumental in helping a radiologist to improve head and neck cancer management.
We want to provide greater context around online content for consumers, and reduce the amount of time people have to devote to sorting through information.
It is important to have a community, especially for students of color because it's easy to feel like you're erased, that you don't belong somewhere because historically you're not a part of that group, but things have to change and things are changing, and it's so important to have diversity in tech.
It is just amazing to see what people my age can do with the resources that we have at universities. It makes you feel like we can really do something good for the future. I think we have potential to really save this earth
The Ph.D. experience allowed me to mature as a person. I learned to function in an environment where I had to figure out the parameters myself. I came out of UCSC with self confidence and the ability to figure out a solution and explain it to an audience.
I super recommend taking a class like CSE 115A where you finally get to build something that you want to build... We are all used to doing homework assignments, so when you actually have to make that leap, it is really amazing the amount of growth that comes from that.
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.