Student profile

Accepted into University of California Santa Cruz

GPA: 3.82

SAT/ACT: 34

Extracurricular activities: The student was heavily involved in her field of interest in CS as well as in her community. The student volunteered at the Chabot Space, the Science Center, Caring Hands, Teaching Indian Classical Dance, and FIRST Robotics. Participated in research at UC Berkeley and interned at UC Berkeley Circadian Rhythm.

 

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem-solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

 

I winced as I saw a man at Costco throw his plastic water bottle in a trash bin rather than the labeled recycle bin with a picture of a water bottle. I watched as people struggled to understand how to dispose of their trash. Three bins, labeled “Recycling,” “Compost,” and “Trash,” confused shoppers, who threw their waste into random bins. This results in polluting the environment and harming wildlife.  

 

To combat this mindless way of disposing different types of waste into the wrong group, I planned out a design for a “SmartCan.”  I knew there had to be a better way to sort trash.  Rather than have trash cans labeled “recycling”, “compost”, and “trash”, I could create an automated device that sorted the trash into three separate groups on its own. 

 

For the engineering division of my school’s Student Recognition awards, I undertook a project to code an object-detection algorithm using Python to detect simple objects such as banana peels or plastic containers. I then improved the algorithm’s efficacy by having it detect more unique objects such as symbols on packages that indicate whether an object should be recycled or composted. Building the physical trashcan required more creativity. I sketched different models of trash cans and mechanisms in my notebook, as I tried to develop the most efficient manner for the can to work with cameras, a raspberry pi circuit, motors, and the bins for the waste products to be dumped into. After weeks of trips to Home Depot to buy supplies such as a metal-cutting saw and a variety of metal sheets, I made a mini version of the prototype and called it the SmartCan. I won the Congressional Award. 

 

Solving practical problems using technology is one of my favorite forms of creative expression. To me, creating a mechanical project like the SmartCan, or developing a device that converts sound energy to electrical energy, requires more imaginative thinking than mechanical thinking. I hope to solve environmental problems in the future and look forward to pursuing a career in STEM to actualize my creative side.