• Can you tell us a little bit about yourself (your background, your hometown, your school)?

Hi, I’m Ari, rising junior at MIT studying Computation and Cognition. I’m a self-taught designer, developer, and aspiring humanitarian entrepreneur. I am also a published
model and author. I grew up in Barrington RI with my mom, who is an Honduran immigrant, dad who is a US Army veteran with 20+ years of service, and brother, who
is investment-savvy.

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•  How did you gain an interest in CS, and what were your first experiences with CS?

As a kid I loved playing video games: I would take apart my game consoles and put them together, and I would draw my own original characters and write stories and
make board games. Then, in 2nd grade my mom enrolled me in a tech summer camp and I built my first video game. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to pursue CS.

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• What interested you to pursue Computation and Cognition (at MIT) and what does the major involve?

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Computation and cognition is an interdisciplinary field which spans computer science, machine learning, psychology, epistemology, and neuroscience. My interest in this field stems from my love of psychology and CS, and I hope to use the skills I gain to found my own company which uses AI/ML to improve the lives of people in Global Majority countries.

 

• Can you please mention what CS related projects have you worked on since coming to MIT?

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MIT has definitely helped me attain the CS skills to thrive in and out of the classroom. I’ve been fortunate to intern at Microsoft (freshman summer), Apple (sophomore
summer) and two Y-Combinator backed startups. I was on the founding team of Ozone, a YC startup building a collaborative cloud powered video editor. I founded my
own company which provides web design for startups where I manage everything, including client projects, marketing, finances, design and development. Within MIT, I am very involved in CS related activities. Through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, I interned as a full stack software engineer with the MIT Media Lab to create a settlement visualization web application. I was the lead web developer for Global Startup Workshop, and a business instructor for Global Startup Labs, an international program that teaches MIT-affiliated graduate students how to build machine learning startups. Additionally, I have taken several CS courses such as Machine Learning, Perception, Machine Vision, and Math for CS that have a project component: ranging from simulations of visual/auditory illusions using signal
processing, compression, and image convolution techniques, a masked facial recognition system, and the UI/UX for a web application about substance abuse.

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• Can you briefly share briefly about the organization (MITxHarvard Women in Artificial Intelligence) you are involved with?

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This is an interscholastic club comprised of MIT and Harvard students. I am on the leadership board and the head of the mentorship program which matches students to
experienced grad PhD or industry counterparts to exchange EI/ML information and have conversations.

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• What advice would you give to female students concerned about the gender disparities in CS?

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Women and non-binaries in tech: you are talented, smart, capable, and worthy of being in CS, and do not let anyone tell you differently! My best advice for you is to try and find your community within the workplace, find others you can trust and relate to, and always speak up if you experience or witness harassment in the workplace.

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