Student profile
Why U Mich
I always believed computers were mindless machines until I watched Wall-E. An intelligent waste-management robot on a mission to conquer intergalactic evil incited my young passion for robotics and computer science. Throughout my youth, I devotedly built lego robotics.
In high school, I established my own robotics team in an effort to build my own Wall-E. Wall-E could understand its surroundings, so my team and I equipped the robot (which we called Maul-E, due to its tendency to destroy everything in its path) with vision and gyroscopic sensors to find the scoring object and act appropriately. But this wasn’t enough. At competition, I couldn’t tell Maul-E to “figure it out” and expect it to accomplish anything. Maul-E still relied on pre-programmed actions; it couldn’t think or make intelligent decisions on its own. I strived to endow Maul-E with human-like intelligence.
Pursuing a Computer Science Degree from the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering will equip me with the skills necessary to create intelligent robots.
As a computer science undergraduate, the College of Engineering curriculum would allow me to broaden my horizons by taking advanced technical elective courses, all while maintaining a solid foundation in core computer science principles.
I aim to specialize in electives involving artificial intelligence and human computer interaction to learn how robots can mimic human intelligence. Instead of teaching myself the language of machines, I look forward to taking courses such as EECS 595 or Natural Language Processing to teach machines the language of humans: written and spoken communication.
I intend to apply for the college's 12-week Summer Undergraduate Research for Engineering program (SURE) to contribute directly to groundbreaking research as an undergraduate. I would cherish the opportunity to work with professor Rada Mihalcea who recently researched how artificial intelligence can understand emotion in written text by processing human style, tone, and persuasion. I have been an active member of the debate community my entire high school career; it would be incredible to work on an artificial system capable of mastering the same rhetorical strategies I’ve refined.
I would apply my artificial intelligence learning by joining the student organization called “UM Autonomy,” a competitive robotics team committed to replicating human-like intelligence in autonomous robot-boats. Unlike Maul-E, their robot can “figure it out” as it implements machine learning and artificial intelligence to navigate complex competition scenarios completely on its own. But like Maul-E, it relies on sensor inputs to learn about its surroundings and adapt its decisions; I seek to contribute my knowledge of applying vision and gyro-sensors to advancing this project and others beyond.
In the end however, my education at Michigan will only matter if I can use it to improve the community around me. I will refine my computer science skills so I can be accepted at the Tech Labs program at MCity, to work side by side with entrepreneurs in search of partnering with talented Michigan students. The work of the company Humanising Autonomy and collaborating students, who used AI to prevent vehicle-pedestrian collisions, proves to me that AI will play a pivotal role in the future of public safety. I hope to contribute to this future.
Fiction sparked my interest in robotics and computer science years ago, and my education at the University of Michigan will allow me to turn fiction into reality.