Ava West Email & Phone Number

Before coming to college I strongly disliked technology and the idea of coding. My first experiences in coding consisted of numerous yells at my computer while attempting to complete a Scratch project for my computer class in Myanmar. After swearing off computer science and once my family moved back to the States, my mom enrolled me in a coding class because she realized the increasing need for the skill...I only managed to go to the one session.Alas, in high school I realized that I have a passion for understanding the fundamentals of the things we use today. The behind-the-scenes. The things we don't stop to think about like how the fertilizer that grows our food was chemically engineered or how the fluids in our car allow us to get to work. Eventually that turned into: how our phones work, how the applications I use at the research lab were developed, there's computers in cars?! I thought I chased that curiosity into the chemistry field, thus entering the University of Delaware as an honors chemistry major. However, after a semester of various chemistry courses I found that the creative side to my curiosity was not being fully explored. Curious (as I usually am), I decided to take a computer science course - General Computer Science for Engineers. To my outmost surprise, I loved it. I fell in love with programming. It had everything that I felt was lacking in my pursuit in chemistry. The knowledge base of computer science changes everyday. New technologies come out so frequently that computer science courses struggle to teach it all in a semester. More importantly, I realized that I could solve almost any complex problem in efficient, innovative ways and that the impact of the technologies we use today is unquantifiable. It's a field I want to succeed in and be a part of.Part of my progress with that comes from the work I do at the Hadden-Perilla Lab. Currently, I specialize in programming for abstracted visualizations in VMD, assistive technology, augmented reality, web applications and outreach. I have done most of my coding in Tcl, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I can easily work in Linux environments and have Git/GitHub under my belt too. Outside of the lab, I do a lot of work in C and C++. Microsoft Visual Studio Code is my IDE of choice and I'm currently learning TypeScript, Bootstrap, React and Node.JS. I hope to gain technical and interpersonal skills outside of class with an ambitious team of collaborative, knowledgeable people.

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  University Of Delaware

  Junior