Sofia Stoica

Year in School
Freshman

Major
CS

Research Interests
Artificial Intelligence Computer Graphics and Vision

Research Mentor
Heng Ji

Research/Engagement Experience

Interests
Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Large Language Models, Computer Vision, and Systems.

Project Title

How did I get interested in Computer Science?
Both my parents and my brother are computer scientists, so I often heard them discuss various CS topics. To better understand their discussions, I followed CMU's "Fundamentals of Programming" course, during the summer before I started high school. From the very first CS problem I solved, I fell in love with CS. The idea that I could write an algorithm and have a machine perform a task was fascinating. From then on, I signed up for as many CS classes as I could at school and took online CS classes during my free time, hungry to learn new things and become even better at CS. In the summer before 11th grade, I discovered machine learning when I took Andrew Ng’s "Machine Learning" course on Coursera, where I learned how to have machines actually learn to perform complex tasks like image recognition, sentiment analysis, (etc.) without needing to write the algorithm to do it. This course showed me the limitless possibilities of CS and how it helps people do their work better and makes their lives easier. From then on, I knew I wanted to be a computer scientist.

What social interests matter to me?
Outreach in CS: making CS accessible to everyone, regardless of their backgrounds and experience; contributing to the effort of understanding the brain and finding a cure for neurological diseases like migraines by using ML to analyze neurobiological data to understand their pathogenesis; and contributing to the effort of building more powerful and efficient ML systems.

What is my most impactful college experience?
So far, the most impactful college experience for me was attending the AdmittedIllini Fest and seeing the abundance of opportunities I had in research, internships, classes, and growth at UIUC as well as beginning to get to know my classmates.

These are a few of my favorite things!
Computer science, especially machine learning, learning new things, research, math, meeting new people, spending time with my friends and family, traveling, and swimming.

Research Description

Biography
I am passionate about CS—especially ML—research, and math. I wrote a paper called "Using Historical Data for Stock Prediction of a Tech Company" (https://publications.waset.org/10013442.pdf) that implemented and tested a variety of ML models and algorithms to most accurately predict the opening price of a tech company. Since I love learning, in my free time I take online courses in CS or math or read ML papers. Finally, every year since tenth grade in high school, I have led or co-led a CS club aiming to share my passion and knowledge of CS with my classmates.