Education History
My relationship with Games and Computers led me down a path wherein I made all my life’s choices based on how I could learn and get better at doing what I like doing the most. Which is why I pursued undergrad in Computer Science and Engineering. During my undergrad along with curricular programming, I also participated in multiple extra-curricular activities which included starting multiple clubs, including the Games and Apps Programming club, a college-wide e-Magazine, and Organized a National-level Technical Symposium. These experiences gave me a lot of opportunities to interact with various types of people, manage projects, design tasks & systems, and allowed me to learn how to tasks get done when varying interests and parties are involved.
Immediately after after graduating, I applied for a Masters program at State University of New York at Buffalo, with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence. My interest in A.I. was motivated by what I had seen in the games I played, and by movies like A.I. (hah), Blade Runner and other Science Fiction romanticization of a future led by the progress in A.I. field. After starting the program, I saw that there were many divisions within A.I. and spent my years learning Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision. My final project was based on a Computer Vision algorithm which generated a 3D point-cloud from multiple 2D images of an object. I chose this because of the scope it had for 3D reconstruction of ancient artifacts, making quick 3D models from sculptures to put in games, for prototyping. (reverse 3D printing of sorts).
I took the A.I. class by Sebastian Thrun when Udactiy was first conceived, also took the MIT M.L. class with Andrew Ng. Two MOOC courses added to the already tight Masters Program at my University of Buffalo curriculum was hard to manage, but I was able to participate in those courses fairly regularly and learn a bit more, a bit differently, about the things that interested me.
I’ve done a lot of self learning, which was how I first started getting into Computer programming, more of which is outlined in my Software page.
Education Summary
Specialization in Artificial Intelligence. Courses Taken: Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Cognitive Science. Extra Coursework: First ever Udacity course on A.I and MIT MOOC on ML. MFA: Game Studies Colloquium. Activities: Senator at CSE Graduate Student's Association.
Founding Member: GRIET e-Magazine, Games and Programming Club, Organized Pragnya
