How 4 empowering women motivated my passion for CS and its versatility.

On the 26th of July, Cooper Union was lucky enough to host four amazing women at our STEM Symposium. Three were alums or graduates of Cooper Union, while one was an independent creator, a graduate student of NYU.

During the Symposium, each person talked about how they were individually able to fuse art and design into collaborative and complex projects, showing how the work of an engineer really has no boundaries.

One alumni currently works at IBM, and talked about how she was able to take the process she followed for her photography projects, and use it on her current flow of work. She mentioned how she would always go about her work knowing exactly what result she wanted, with the real work being the process of arriving at the conclusion. As she came to realize how results never mirrored her expectations, she also realized that an effective way to deal with this "problem" would be to be more flexible and work around the differences. What I took away from her review of her experiences with helping design Watson, IBM's supercomputer and AI, was that working on a project requires a set parameter at times, with sacrifices to be made in order to bridge the deadline or efficiency of a product. This stayed with me because it rings very true with my perception of how business and relationships work in the world—there must always be compromises and room for adjustment in order for there to be realistic success between different parties.

A graduating alum talked about her experiences majoring in Architecture, and how she was able to utilize her skills in design and engineering in order to create a piece of art that not only functioned decoratively, but also functioned manually as an interactive piece that actually created other pieces of art. By perceiving the constraints of a 3D printer (as traditionally, a 3D printer needs to be larger than the piece it prints) and problem-solving around them, she was able to help design a mobile 3D printer arm that was then set up as an art installation that printed other pieces.

A rising college senior also talked about her work for Universal Studio and for other renown companies, designing and marketing products for children. She had always known she wanted to work for Disney, and took the opportunity to major in engineering when she realized that a way to bring happiness to people was viable through design and CS. She described multiple internships in which she designed and coded for the infamous moving window displays of several companies and created exhibits for Universal Studios. I thought it was amazing how she recognized her dream even as a kid, and applied herself to fulfill it. It's not very often that I hear of motivated people with such clear insight into what they wish to do with their lives, and to say the least, it inspires confidence in myself because she recounted that she didn't know what path she wanted to take before college, and yet accomplished so much given the amount she was able to learn because she had a passion for her work.

The last speaker was Ari Melenciano, who is a speaker, artist, designer, educator, DJ, and activist, among a score of other titles. I have never envied and admired someone as much I have her. I was immensely moved by how clear and selfless her motto is—“I just want to spend my life creating very beautiful things". To me, that goal is admirably pure, and substantially supported by the type of work she has done. Melenciano holds an incredibly impressive resume, as the creator of several websites, tools, and festivals meant to bring other CS students into an interactive and fun space, as well as voice her take on our society's culture of today and the past. On top of creating instructional videos and dj-ing at her art exhibits, she is also creating a line of "neo-retro" cameras with an old-school/futuristic feature and function that is impressive given the skills it takes to create a viable product along with the coding part. I was blown away by how much expertise she had in multiple fields!

What I took away from the Symposium was how important it was to apply myself in order to achieve results. One of the main things that make me procrastinate is my lack of perspective at times, which causes failing self-motivation and in-productivity, which I always feel guilty for. I hate wasting time more than anything else, and yet my mind would rather take the easier path of putting off a task at every turn. I hadn't thought that the amount of productivity projected by all the speakers would be possible, even in 5 years, for some! The experience of having heard first-hand about these experiences have motivated me, as I hope that one day, I will be able to maintain the passion that drives me to accomplish creative and innovative things.