Siddharth Salunkhe
I think most people, myself included, inherit most of their personality from their parents and guardians. I like to think of myself as the perfect blend of my parents - I get my appreciation for art and creativity from my dad and my love of math, patterns and organization from my mom. Because of my dad, I was very interested in painting, fine arts and generally the idea of creating new things from a young age, and because of my mom, I became very interested in math and its many applications. I think it was those two together that helped me find mechanical engineering as a major for college. Another large factor in that decision was joining scouts, where many of the volunteer projects my troop would do would be related to carpentry or woodworking or repair. I was drawn to the idea that all the infrastructure and comforts we have were, at some point, designed and built from scratch.
I was not a perfect mechanical engineer, but mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech was perfect for me. I was not interested in cars or planes like the other people I went to college with, but I did work in a makerspace/prototyping shop where I learned about all sorts of manufacturing and project work. I think most importantly, I made a great group of friends who were all very talented makers who inspired me to explore new hobbies and discover computer science. It was in the makerspace, working on robotics projects, that I discovered computer science. My goodness, I felt like my world had been cracked open.
I took some CS classes in undergrad and I was instantly hooked. The problems were unique, the technology was cool, and since code was easy to build and run, it satisfied my impatient need to see immediate results in my work. I went on to work for a software company called MathWorks where I learned what it really took to build applications that people can use. I found out here that I really knew nothing about CS, so I went back for a masters at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Every class I took made me feel like I had discovered something new - there was always new tech, new math, and new applications that kept me enthralled. All of it was creative problem solving - again, the creativity + math that my parents instilled when I was a kid. CS is one of the fastest growing fields in so many dimensions - from theory to application.
As I wrap up my masters, I hope to find a career in software where I can build new elegant systems and continue to learn new things along the way.