Undergraduate Computer Science Student @ Georgia Tech

Briana M.

I am a senior undergraduate computer science major (with a pre-law minor) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Despite being a computer science major, my first love has always been mathematics. (Fun fact, I actually entered Georgia Tech as a mathematics major until discovering the joy of computer science during my freshman and sophomore year!). Math can be a pretty tough subject, and I attribute my love and confidence in it to the incredible teachers and mentors I had in my elementary and middle school days. My love and enthusiasm for problem solving is the product of having enthusiastic and patient teachers and mentors in my developmental mathematics courses, so why wouldn’t I want to pass that along?

Some personal highlights:
~ From 2021-2025, I served as a Computer Science teaching assistant for the National Center of Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). I assisted in teaching computer science basics in Java & Python to 175+ high school students over the span of 4 years.
~ From elementary to middle school, I competed in 5 regional math olympic competitions for both computation and reasoning, landing top 5 for 4 out of 5 of those years.
~ By junior year of high school, I was taking AP BC Calculus (having taken all of the advanced mathematics courses up to then) as well as AP statistics, snagging an A in both courses.
~ Former lead instructor for a GT AI K-12 Summer Camp where we constructed and taught a curriculum that taught students AI concepts and how to build their own AI models.

From elementary school to college, I’ve always found it intimidating to confess to teachers and professors when I’m not understanding something. However, if I had not done that at GT, I would have never learned about coding and truly fallen in love with Computer Science. Confusion being met with patience and encouragement can be building blocks to hope, understanding, and passion for any subject.