Cohort Stories: Meet Julian
Boston: vol. 8, no. 47— guest post by Julian Biju
In my journey as a computer science major thus far, I have accomplished numerous milestones that I am proud of. The most significant among these were the software contributions I made as a research assistant at my university’s bioinformatics lab this past summer. As a research assistant, I was able to make contributions to an open-source bioinformatics software
and gain invaluable experience in collaborating in a team environment. Another milestone I accomplished was serving as a teaching assistant for my university’s data structures and algorithms course. I am extremely proud of this accomplishment, as it has allowed me to make great strides not only in my technical knowledge, but it has also allowed me to progress my interpersonal communication skills.
What really gets me excited is working on impactful projects that have tangible benefits to users.
My interest in programming began in 8th grade when I signed up for a 6-week introductory Python course. At the time, I firmly believed that by the end of the class, I would possess the skills to create the next Spotify or Snapchat. Although the two month course (quite expectedly) failed to transform me into the next Mark Zuckerberg, I was adamant in my desire to create an application. Armed with the fundamentals of programming, I began to work on building an application which I envisioned to be a simpler version of Spotify constructed using pygame. For two weeks, I stayed up into the wee hours, scouring YouTube tutorials on pygame and wrestling with stubborn bugs. Despite the challenges, I was able to cobble together a song player app in pygame that could play, pause and skip songs from a predefined library of songs. The magical feeling of being able to come up with an idea and then bring it to life using code captivated me,
and ever since I have been hooked on programming.
What really gets me excited is working on impactful projects that have tangible benefits to users. For example, last summer I was able to contribute a new feature to an open source bioinformatics software that allowed for researchers to more easily identify potential targets for pharmaceutical drugs. It was extremely motivating to know that my work
could be used by scientists as they research diseases! I also find it to be motivating to work in a team environment, as collaborating on problems helps me to gain different perspectives on how my teammates might approach an issue which further enhances my problem solving repertoire.
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