Pratyush Muthukumar, a third-year computer science major in UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), has been named a 2021 Goldwater Scholar by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. The highly competitive award is given to academically promising sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in natural science, mathematics or engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship provides annual financial support that is equal to the cost of tuition, mandatory fees, books, and room and board minus the amount of support from other sources, up to a maximum of $7,500.

How can we better support diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace? Women in Technology at UCI (WIT@UCI) tackled this question with its first event of 2021, “Allyship That Makes an Impact: How to Support Women in IT.” During opening remarks for the Feb. 24 webinar, Shohreh Bozorgmehri stressed that “allies play a critical role in the success of underrepresented employees throughout their careers.” The founder of WIT@UCI and director of the Student and Academic Services Division of UCI’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) went on to ask, “everyday actions have the power to make a real difference, but what are these actions?”

Last year, UCI’s annual hackathon event, HackUCI, was a three-day, in-person event held in January with more than 500 undergraduate and graduate students camped out in UCI’s Student Center. This year’s challenge was finding a way to re-create that experience online. “The transition from organizing an in-person to a virtual event was a huge undertaking for the entire organization,” says computer science major Riley Champion, marketing and co-tech director of HackUCI 2021. “Most of us had experience with hosting HackUCI in person, so we were a bit frazzled at first. However, throughout the summer and fall quarters, we prepared ourselves to create an environment that attempted to simulate an in-person experience!”

Computer science and engineering student Keyan Kazemian is challenging his peers across Southern California to think outside the box. “We’re in a very unique geography that’s filled with talent, yet students here do not feel compelled, for whatever reason, to pursue their own startup ideas,” says the transfer student from Washington, who is now studying at UCI in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). “It’s not a problem of capacity,” he stresses. “It’s a problem of exposure and culture.” So he set out to change the culture by investing in local Gen Z innovation.

On Feb. 5, 2021, in honor of Black History Month, the alumni chapter for the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) hosted an online panel, “Black Superstar Leaders in ICS,” as part of its Lunch & Learn series. Chapter president Pooja Lohia moderated the panel, which featured the following three ICS alumni and two current ICS scholars from the Department of Informatics: