Yoshee Jain

Year in School
Junior

Major
Computer Science

Research Interests
Artificial Intelligence Computers and Education Interactive Computing

Research Mentor
Prof. Katie Cunningham

Research/Engagement Experience
As a research assistant, my mentor and I presented a poster at ICER 2023 uncovering techniques for plan identification. As a member of the content team at R|P, my team and I facilitated communication with keynote speakers, chief guests, educationists, and other sponsors for organizing talks at the mid-west’s largest student run tech conference. As a member of the back-end tech team at Panthea Health, I took raw data about hospitals in line with 'The Hospital Price Transparency Act' and then parsed the data in the needed format using Python and MySQL for further action. I further helped the team to compile the data in the form of an android app to make it more customer friendly and accessible by providing them with choices for the available medical services at their doorstep with the best deals and prices. Other involvements, including Girls Who Code, ACM, [AI@UIUC,] (mailto:AI@UIUC,) [OS@I,] (mailto:OS@I,) EC, and many more, have contributed to making my learning experiential.

Interests
My research interests include AI and ML, Data Analysis, and Computers and Education. Aside from academics, I love to dance, travel, learn new programming languages, and eat ice-creams!

Project Title
TBD

How did I get interested in Computer Science?
Coming from a family of engineers, since early childhood, I have enjoyed the clickety-clack of keys on the keyboard. When I was selected to visit NASA, it made me realize the impact of technology on our world. Soon, I discovered my passion for programming. It teaches me perseverance and discipline. Various projects, internships, and competitions during the entire learning journey helped me delve into the applications of computer science and math in the real world and developed an impetus to believe that technology can help achieve a better, safer, and more sustainable future for all.

What social interests matter to me?
I have always been extensively involved in volunteering/projects for social good, participated in various awareness drives regarding female empowerment and mental health, educated the underprivileged, and many more. As my poems look forward, are optimistic, and impact their readers positively and poetically, I even wrote uplifting poems to give people hope and strength to deal with the pandemic. I wish to embed myself in a research-based culture with a strong focus on solving real-world problems using a multidisciplinary approach. The joy of learning from erudite mentors and like-minded peers in a unique culture and a creative community with a network of opportunities is where I foresee carving a niche for myself by learning and contributing to society. I intend to contribute towards demystifying STEM careers for young girls to generate a love for the STEM field in them, a cause I hold very close to my heart. Therefore, I intend to encourage girls to pursue STEM studies and work in sync with various industries to help devise innovative and dynamic tech tools, resolve climate issues and develop medical devices to save lives, to name a few.

What is my most impactful college experience?
I have had multi-faceted experiences, and thus choosing any one of them would be me being biased. Therefore, every experience is a learning that weaves me into the kind of person I am and want to be, which leads me to believe that I am not a sum of my circumstances but a product of the decisions I make for myself.

These are a few of my favorite things!
Dancing, writing poems, sipping coffee, and hanging out with friends and family!

Research Description
Our research aims to develop programming literacy skills in conversational programmers, so they can communicate better with technical co-workers. Some students in non-CS fields, such as management, may not aspire to write code as a professional programmer, but are still interested in familiarizing themselves with common concepts in programming. This research will help these students who do not want to become software developers understand code at a high level by helping them understand common code patterns from applications they see as relevant to their field of work. We focus our search for code patterns on domains that interest non-majors, like data visualization, data cleaning, and web development. As part of this vision, we interviewed researchers who identified novel programming patterns in their work to investigate the state of the art of pattern identification, as well as common challenges. In order to improve the efficiency of pattern identification and support instructors, next we will be looking at code similarity algorithms and testing whether they can programmatically identify candidate patterns.

Biography
Yoshee Jain is a sophomore in Computer Science at the Grainger College of Engineering. As a self-motivated learner, from innovating to teaching and many activities in between, she has dipped her toes in all of them. She has thrived leading her teams, testing her creativity, and developing prototypes. On campus, she is involved with various RSOs, including Girls Who Code, Open Source @ Illinois, AI@UIUC, EC, and ACM, to inspire girls to take up STEM fields as careers. Being a member of such organizations in addition to her participants in research labs allows her to dive into experiential learning and stimulates constructive knowledge. She is confident that her learnings from this program will empower her to benefit the world by enabling her to combine her technical background and humanitarian spirit to pay forward.