By Anusha Ramakrishnan, MSCS 2018

We are pleased to announce the formation of the new, METRANS student web team, and their upcoming launch of a new, student-focused website, which will function both as a section of the METRANS website and as a standalone site. Created by and for students, this new resource will be full of transportation-related information and opportunities designed for students. The METRANS student web page will be easily accessible directly from the main website homepage (metrans.org) and also independently via its own URL (metransstudents.org).  The student website will be similar to the existing METRANS website in terms of look, feel, and functionality, but specifically features opportunities and events of particular interest to students, including:

• Upcoming Transportation-Related Events
• Employment Opportunities (and other ways to get involved in the field)
• METRANS Student Podcasts
• METRANS Student Newsletters (both current and former issues)
• Transportation News and Announcements

Two international graduate students, Kritika Vaid and Anchal Kapoor, each pursuing a Master of Computer Science in the Viterbi School of Engineering, were selected to manage the project, which began in fall 2016. Development continued through the fall semester, and the launch is expected this spring. Both students have their roots in India, where they completed their education and also gained experience working for IT companies.

Kritika hails from, as she calls it, “the colorful city of Jaipur” in the northwestern part of India. She finished high school and completed her undergraduate degree in Information Technology at one of  India’s renowned engineering schools—Malaviya National Institute of Technology. She went on work as a software developer at a start-up company in Bangalore, a city also known as the “Silicon Valley of India”. After working for two years, she decided to come to USC to pursue her Master’s in Computer Science, where she joined METRANS.

(Photo by Kritika Vaid)

Anchal was born in Haldwani, a township at the foothills of the Himalayas, the great mountain ranges of India. She completed her undergraduate studies in Computer Science from Panjab University, another renowned university in India. She then worked as a software engineer for three years at a multinational consulting company, Opera Solutions, before she decided to pursue her Master’s in Computer Science at USC.

(Photo by Anchal Kapoor)

Coming from different work backgrounds, the team had different motivations for taking up this job at METRANS. For Kritika, it was a natural choice to work on website development since she already was experienced in that area, while for Anchal, it was a welcome change from having worked on data analytics at her previous job. Both of them agree that the idea of teaming up with new people from different parts of the world was another factor that made this position more interesting. Kritika shares, “This is the first time in METRANS that an internal website team was formed, and METRANS Associate Director, Victoria Deguzman, showed great faith in us by allowing us this opportunity and responsibility. We were really determined to prove our worth.”

When asked if it was easy to work on a website from scratch, Anchal said, “Making the student website was a challenge because it was to be developed on a platform called Drupal, and neither of us had ever used it before. I guess everyone would agree that engineers always find their way out and that’s what we did. Working for METRANS has been a great learning curve. Be it gathering requirements to building the website, getting acquainted with a new tool, or implementing the website and putting it all together, we learned a lot throughout the process. I am confident that the skills I have acquired working at METRANS are going to be helpful in the future.” Kritika added, “Being an engineer means solving problems so we took this as a challenge and enjoyed working together on the project.”

Both of them hold great passion for the field of Computer Science and see themselves achieving new milestones in years to come. Expressing her thoughts on her future career plan, Anchal shared, “In every industry, a tremendous amount of data is generated every day. I am really fascinated by the huge potential that this data holds for analyzing even the simplest of activities. I aspire to become a data scientist to generate intelligent insights from this data.” Kritika noted, “I like solving real world problems and being a software engineer is a perfect way to do that. Having started my journey as a software engineer, I want to become an entrepreneur in software and have the power to build products that make the lives of millions of people on this planet easier.”

We look forward to launching this new web resource, and wish Anchal and Kritika success for their endeavors in the field of technology. Watch this space!

Anusha Ramakrishnan

Anusha is a student assistant at METRANS, working as an editor of the METRANS weekly student newsletter and providing website support. She is a first year Viterbi School of Engineering graduate student specializing in Computer Science. Her interests lie in the field of data science and machine learning to improve general accessibility and usability of technology. She is currently also pursuing a Natural Language Processing course at USC to help combine her two interests of linguistics and technology.  Anusha can be reached at [email protected].