From the Screen…
(2001-2009)
My love for robotics began with media. At the age of three, I saw the Omnidroid in The Incredibles and a year later at four I saw the movie robots. Both films captured my attention and I rapidly began to grow attached to robot/synthetic characters such as Data from Star Trek Next Generation and General Grievous from Star Wars.
Reading Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot changed my perspective. As I grew up, I began to become more obsessed with how and why robots functioned as well as the moral and ethical considerations of what developing robotics means fr us as humans.
Fun Fact: I have been fencing since 10 years old! I fell in love with swashbuckling in cinema (Princess Bride) and have been doing it ever since.
…To Science!
(2009-2015)
When I was nine years old, my elementary school created its first robotics club. I was thrilled, to say the least. We did LEGO First Robotics competitions, but more than that our coach gave us our first engineering challenges, from creating a line following robot to simulated wrestling robots that tried to push one another out of the ring.
I began to pursue robotics in earnest, reading Life magazine articles about robotics, and this was when I first discovered the videos of Boston Dynamics. At twelve years old, I undertook my first big research project into robots and neural networks and I rook great pride in presenting my research to my classmates.
In middle school I continued LEGO First Robotics competitions and pursued technology and robotics related electives. But everything changed when I went to high school…
Fun Fact: I’ve played piano since I was two years old!
High School: An Exercise in Duality
(2015-2019)
In high school, I continued with robotics, taking AP Physics 1 and 2, as well as joining my high school’s robotics team, eventually becoming the team president in 2018. But at the same time, I found myself drawn to history and language. I took Latin and then Ancient Greek and my love of reading and learning about history seemed to grow exponentially.
I found myself pulled in two directions, between my love of robotics and my love of language. My senior year of high school I was elected president of both the Latin Club and the robotics team, leading my peers in explorations of my two passions.
As the weight of graduation and college loomed, I felt like I had to choose between my two passions to pursue as my undergraduate degree. I had the opportunity to apply for a prestigious Ford Summer Internship program, one I had worked throughout the year to qualify for. But ultimately when the application was in front of me, something felt wrong. I felt in that moment that I didn’t want to work for Ford and if not at Ford, then… where? I set the application aside, an identity crisis brewing as I prepared for college.
Fun Fact: I love the outdoors and exercising! I started running in 2017 and started biking to school in 2024.
Language and Learning
(2019-2023)
During my undergraduate career, I pursued a double major in Classical Languages and Literature, and Art History. I loved it thoroughly, immersing myself in the material and my university department, eventually becoming one of the copresidents of the Classics Club, Eta Sigma Phi, and doing work for professors in the department.
Soon (though the Covid-19 pandemic made it feel like eons), I found myself at the same place I had been four years prior, contemplating what comes next. While I was writing my senior thesis (on social commentary in the presentation of food in Roman Satire), I felt like something was missing, like a weight was pressing on me. It wasn’t until I helped my partner move to Boston that I realized what I was missing. When we passed Boston Dynamics on I-95, I burst into tears with the knowledge that the path I was on would never lead me to Boston Dynamics.
But to suddenly change majors the semester before graduation would have meant two to three more years in undergrad. And if I wanted to pursue a career in classics, I would need more than a bachelors to qualify for most of the positions I was interested in. The decision between a higher degree in classics and changing majors weighed heavily on me. Ultimately, I decided to finish my double major as I had it planned out, and graduate on time. But before I made any other decisions, I took a gap year and moved to Paris to teach English at Lycee Chaptal, a local middle and high school, as a part of TAPIF, the Teaching Assistant Program in France.
Fun Fact: When I was living in Paris, I wrote a book!
LEAPing Ahead!
(2024-Present)
This brings us to LEAP: the Late Entry Accelerated Program at Boston University. The program is designed for people who did not do engineering in their undergraduate careers, providing them with access to the undergraduate classes they are missing and then allowing them to LEAP into masters level courses. Here, I have rekindled my passions for robotics and technology and am remembering the feelings I had when I was growing up.
Back in high school, I felt I had to choose between humanities and robotics, but this could not be further from the truth. I have learned how to fuse my love of languages and history with my love of robotics. Computer languages (Python, C++, Rust) make sense in my mind the same way that French, Latin, and Ancient Greek do: they are all languages that we use to communicate. I am pursuing courses in Machine Learning and Deep Learning while simultaneously reading Shakespeare and Shelley.
Some people have asked me if I regret pursuing humanities undergraduate degrees. My answer to them: no. I do not regret pursuing my passions, in the same way that I do not regret pursuing my passion for robotics. I do not have to choose between my passions because to do so would be to deny a fundamental part of myself.
I believe that robotics and AI have the ability to enhance peoples’ lives and to help save the planet, and we have a moral responsibility to pursue it. This is why I am pursuing artificial intelligence and neural networks: the smarter and faster and cheaper we can run AI, the better systems that we can have in place. I want to pursue the fusion of robotics and neural networks to make robots more deployable to more diverse job types with less need for coding by onsite engineers.
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