Parmita's Blog

I was featured in SCS Day again!!! Last year (link) I had a small display with a handful of my comics. It was a lot of fun being featured as well as attending and seeing everyone else’s diverse range of talents.  This year, I got the opportunity to be featured again and had a lot more art to share. I got an entire wall of my art and comics and to be honest it was almost overwhelming! I’ve openly shared my art online to thousands of people, but that has never really been nerve-wracking since I don’t actually know those people. But here, my work was blown up and put on the walls of the Gates computer science building--the same building I practically live in and seen by all the people I work with and respect. That has a completely different feeling to it and while I was proud of my work I also felt a little scared. Would they like it? What if my students saw it? Will people see me differently? Would people think of me as less of a serious computer scientist if they saw this ...

I’ve been making fun comic strips and fanart for as long as I can remember. This has mostly been a solo activity since I didn’t know any other people who were interested in making them too. But then last year at CMU’s Activity Fair I came across Artist Alley--a club dedicated to people making fanart like I do! Of course, I immediately joined and it has been so much fun. And this year, I even tabled at the Activity Fair myself! Some of the art pieces are mine :) It has been such a great experience being with a community of people who enjoy the same niche things that I do. One of the biggest benefits has been the structured improvement of my art skills. I have never actually taken an art class, so everything I’ve learned about art has been through online tutorials and just looking at a lot of other artist’s work. But at Artist Alley, I joined a mentor-mentee program where I get weekly assignments and critique from a more experienced artist. Until now, I never really had the o...

This semester, I did an independent study project and presented at the end-of-semester "Meeting of the Minds" event held at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. Throughout the semester, I worked with my advisor, Cori Faklaris--a Ph.D. student and Arnav Mahajan--another undergraduate, on our research project in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Our overall goal was to find a way to predict user behavior regarding their personal cybersecurity actions. While computer applications may have many strong security measures in place, it is often the end user who is the weakest link. (They may accidentally share passwords or leave data unsecured) Despite the multitude of different cybersecurity tools that exist (Password managers, Two Factor Authentication, general caution and awareness online, etc.) many users do not put these tools into practice. Prior research into the matter elaborates on many different theories and models of how users adapt to new techn...

As I mentioned in my last post here , I interned at a startup this summer where I got to work on Machine Learning Models. I compiled together the basic core ideas and concepts involved in creating a model like this from start-to-finish and made this fun tutorial:  https://github.com/parmita52/machine-learning-spark-ex Check it out!

This summer I was an intern at Numerify ! Numerify is a tech startup providing a system of Intelligence for IT. It was an incredible experience, and I learned so much in such a short period. Numerify’s clients include companies such as Netflix, Coach, and McDonald's. They use Business Intelligence and analytics tools to help their customers business manage their IT Data. Over the course of the summer, I picked up a whole laundry list of acronyms used in the Business Intelligence (or should I say the BI) world: RDMS - Relational Database Management System ITSM - IT Service Management ITPA - IT Product Analytics SDA - Software Development Analytics ETL - Extract Transform Load APM - Appliance Performance Monitoring SLA - Service Level Agreement CSAT - Customer Satisfaction GUID -  Global Unique ID POM - Project Object Model REST - Representational State Transfer CRUD - Create, read, update and delete ER - Entity Relationship OLTP - Online Transaction Processing ...

I had so much fun today at the Facebook Intern Summerfest! Like a regular job fair, I got to talk to a lot of recruiters about potential work in the future. But unlike a regular job fair, I got to play games, hangout, and have casual conversations with people who actually work at Facebook. I really loved talking to the Facebook employees. I was so cool to see their truthful inside perspective. The employees I met today all share the same spark and energy. They were all so excited to share more about their projects, their daily work schedule, and tips for college students like me, just starting off. Overall it was such a fun experience that I wish I could share more! (but of course, gotta remember that NDA!)

SCS Day is an annual celebration at Carnegie Mellon to showcase the diverse talents of students in the School of Computer Science. I submitted some of the comics I've made and I'm proud to say they were selected to be placed in the art gallery! I had a lot of fun sharing my art with my classmates. I'm pretty used to hearing feedback from lots of anonymous people online, but it's a completely different experience in person. I was floored when upperclassmen and TAs who I really look up to came up to me to say they liked my comics. It means a lot coming from them.  I also had tons of fun during the event. Other than the Art Gallery, there was also a big Talent Show and it was so amazing! People showcased their musical talents (there was even a band of SCS students), magic tricks, and even acrobatics!  Overall it was so much fun and I can't wait to participate again next year :)