I pick the problem first and learn whatever it takes to build it, and the projects I care about most
started the same way. A few months ago I went to an assistive-technology
workshop and got talking to the speaker afterwards. She told me that when a blind person loses something at
home, their only real option is to video-call a stranger and ask them to look through the camera. I could
not stop thinking about it. BlindSpot came out of that conversation — the award came later, and it was
never the point.
That is the pattern: I build things nobody asked for, and the findings I am proudest of came from
questions nobody assigned me. Right now I am finishing my MS in Computer Science at Rutgers and looking for
somewhere to keep doing it.
Away from the screen I train, I read, and I spend a probably unreasonable amount of attention on
habits — the small things you repeat until they compound into something. It is the same instinct as
the software: nothing good arrives finished, you just keep making it slightly better than it was.