I thought I’d start this blog off with a little bit about me and how I ended up studying computer science, so we can get a little more formally introduced. From a young age I was fervently interested in three things, chemistry, computers and film. I tinkered a lot with the latter two in my free time when I was a kid, since they were a bit more accessible/feasible to do at home than chemistry experiments haha.
The first computer I was able to get my hands on was a hand-me-down Compaq desktop that ran Windows 95 (this was around 2001-ish), and I taught myself how to use MS-DOS and write very simple programs in Basic and C on it. I became frustrated with the machine since it was dated, and I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do on it (games in included 😉), so eventually I used some of my allowance money to buy another old beater PC from a yard sale. But hey, this one was a Dell that supported Windows 2000 and it had a fancy AGP GeForce card and better ram, score! Over time I ended up in possession of a few other old PCs and by the time I was in high school I had a Frankenstein of a machine that was piecemealed together from the carcasses of others. As the machine evolved, I continued to learn basic computer science concepts from books and the internet, but it was around this time I also start taking a lot of pictures and getting more involved with photography.
I tested out of high school at the end of my sophomore year because I was not vibing with the environment and I started college at my local community college studying biochemistry. Computing fell off my radar around this time, I wanted to see what else was out there. I also started working in the Art Department of Activision around the same time. I worked there for two years and wore many hats working on high fidelity AV assets for promotional and commercial use for the Call of Duty and Skylanders franchises. While I enjoyed my time there thoroughly, I realized that film was best kept as a hobby and that one of my other interests was a better fit for a career. I stopped working for Activision around the time I was ready to transfer to a big 4 year institution. I found my way to UCSD as a biochem student and began studying to apply to medical school.
I had a great time at UCSD. I studied very hard and learned a lot. I also got involved in theoretical and computational biophysics research where I worked on projects using computers to identify and study novel therapeutics for heart disease (see below). It was my experiences in this lab that really reignited my interest in computing again. Seeing how powerful modern systems (even just desktop GPUs) were and just how much you can do on them was mind blowing. I found myself wanting to develop new tools to help our work pipeline in the lab. I actually did write some simple Python code to parse molecular dynamics trajectory data looking for novel intra-molecular interactions, and was able to share it with the whole team. But I had a decision to make here. My time at UCSD was coming to an end, was I still going to do medicine? I had put together a great application and worked really hard to do so. But I also spent a lot of time in hospitals volunteering and had some issues with the work environment and the overall medical system here in the US. I had to wrack my brain for months deciding what path to take, CS or Med. It was a very hard decision, but I ultimately decided to get another degree in CS here at OSU and not pursue medicine at this time. Was this the right decision? I think so, I’ve always been a bit of a misfit, and I don’t think my energy to innovate and try new things meshed well in a field that orbits around so much compliance (understandably so, you’re dealing with people’s lives). SO here we are, doing new stuff, feeling good about it, and exited for the future.
Some of my past work.
See more here
https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(19)32441-5#relatedArticles
