Four recipients for the 2018 Parker Skiba Memorial Endowed Presidential Scholarship have been selected by the University of Texas at Austin Computer Science Faculty. These students were selected on their entrepreneurial spirit and ambitions and their academic excellence. The students are listed below.
BHAVIN GUPTA, Senior
Bhavin is pursuing a double major in computer science and neuroscience. He is a Turing Scholar and is partnering with faculty member Dr. Alex Huth in research on advancing science by understanding the fundamental computations of the human cortex. He’s also extremely interested in startups and medical technology around genetics, preventative healthcare, and automated surgery. He has been involved in entrepreneurship and currently runs Forestrike (www.forestrike.com), which is a running startup that uses accelerometers to prevent amateur runners from injuring themselves. He’s participated and placed in Texas Shark Tank and 3-Day Startup, as well as the Longhorn Startup course. He will be applying for Longhorn Startup Lab in Spring 2019. Additionally, he is working on another startup called SparkVents that uses accelerometer gesture recognition to create bands for events that link people by contact information when they shake hands.
NEIL PATEL, Junior
Neil’s interest in computer science and entrepreneurship began in high school when his family was stopped by the grocery store, but realized when they got home that they forgot to pickup milk. His parent’s frustration ended up with an idea around creating an app that would send the user a reminder based on their location. With the idea, Neil spent his free time learning Android development and built Geobells, a location-based reminders app. He created a paid version and free version and ended up receiving over 20,000 downloads overall. Now as a student at UT, Neil conducts robotics research in the Building Wide Intelligence lab around autonomous navigation. He is also co-president of the Information and Systems Security Society. He also spends his on entrepreneurial activities, such as competing in Texas Shark Tank where he prototyped and pitched Vino, a drinking glass that automatically measures blood-alcohol-content, which made it to finals. He took Longhorn Startup Seminar last fall and plans to apply to Longhorn Startup Lab in sometime this school year.
SHREYAS SOOD, Junior
Shreyas is a Junior computer science major and heavily involved in UT’s entrepreneurial community. He has been an officer in the Longhorn Entrepreneurship Agency on campus and was on the team that spearheaded launching a startup job fair for UT students. He also helped organize TexCon, a Texas-wide conference for student entrepreneurship-organization leaders to create a state-wide network of people promoting entrepreneurship at their universities. The network has been used to promote events such as Texas Shark Tank state-wide pitch competition. In addition to promoting entrepreneurship and startups, Shreyas is also building and validating some of his own ideas. He’s rolled out apps with over 30,000 downloads and currently working personalized real-time thesaurus extension using machine learning. Additionally, he’s working with a team on tackling waste management issues in Cambodia by connecting with local incubators and youth there for the Presidential Award for Global Learning. He has also completed the Longhorn Startup class and is pursuing the Bridging Disciplines certificate in Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship. Finally, he is an officer in Freetail Hackers, Turing Scholars Student Association and Longhorn Entrepreneurship Agency.
WARREN WANG, Freshman
Warren will be a Freshman in the Computer Science Department this fall. He spent his high school career taking AP Computer Science his freshman year, participating in the USA Computing Olympiad algorithmic contest series, contributing and leading the Computer Science club at his school, and teaching computer science camps. Throughout his high school career, he has developed several invention ideas that he hopes to develop through his academic career at UT and engagement with entrepreneurial resources offered at UT, such as Longhorn Startup and the Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship. Warren is interested in studying artificial intelligence and wants to develop and design the pivotal AI technology that will advance society and help solve world problems. He is currently working on a project to build a clothes-folding robot with a mentor, and looks forward to continuing innovating in the CS field with faculty at UT.
