Although I've always been driven to pursue my dream of becoming a doctor, I was very excited to learn about the PINC program.
Being a biology major myself, I saw great potential in the idea of integrating biology with computer science skills. I foresaw an abundance of opportunities, particularly in the biotech industry. In the following duration of the program, I learned a variety of coding languages, including JAVA, R, and python. There is no doubt in that, much like anything that's new, the concepts were challenging to grasp. However, I found the mentorship in the PINC program from experienced computer science students extremely helpful.
In my final semester, my group members and I presented our year-long project at the COSE 2018 event at San Francisco State University. We had designed a prototype of a program that could detect and track cells via uploaded images or videos. The idea was that such technology would be incredibly useful in research labs, where one can identify and quantify individual cells. My contribution to the project was designing the code for the user interface. Our team won honorable recognition at the event. Looking back, I feel incredibly proud of my persistence and that my hard work paid off.
I am grateful for the talented professors and classmates I had the opportunity to work with. Having a bit more experience in coding, I hope to continue to learn on my own through online programs and sharpen my skill-set.
By: Nida Ali