hi, i’m heather
I graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in May 2020 with my Master’s degree in Computer Science. My research focus is in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), with my thesis focusing on visualizing diversity in the fashion industry. I show a few possible ways to visualize data collected from six different brands that could help with understanding whether the fashion industry is doing better or not in terms of diversity. I really enjoy data visualization, especially to help propel forward social change.
Before pursuing my Master’s degree, I worked for a year at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a post-baccalaureate student researcher after finishing my undergraduate degree in Computer Science at the University of Georgia. At Los Alamos, I focused on two projects: investigating memory faults in computer hardware to determine the accuracy of current error notifications and refactoring an internal Python program that helped with schedling jobs on super computers.
Most recently, I interned at Blend as a software engineering intern. While at Blend, I was able to learn about many different parts of the stack since my team dealt with multiple aspects of the product. Additionally, my project focused on creating a production solution for secure storage, transportaion, and usage of sensitive, PII-ful documents and data.
In addition to diversity and inclusivity in STEM, I’m passionate about teaching. I’ve participated in many Hour of Code events and also worked as a summer camp instructor for iD Tech Camps. I was also a teaching assistant for AddisCoder, a program that focused on bringing Introduction to Computer Science education to Ethiopia. In the future, I’d love to participate in a program that helps with making resources (classes, technology, etc) more easily accessible to students interested in Computer Science.
For more information, you can view my GitHub and LinkedIn. Also, feel free to send me an email! My resume is available upon request.