Hobbies and interests
Reading
Music
Art
History
Graphic Design
Astronomy
Coding And Computer Science
Linguistics
Art History
Origami
Food and Eating
Coding and Computer Science
Reading
Academic
Historical
Literary Fiction
Mythology
Art
Classics
Folk Tales
Psychology
I read books daily
Daniela Martinis
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FinalistDaniela Martinis
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FinalistBio
I am an Honors Engineering student at Texas A&M and a prospective Computer Science student! My passions lie in utilizing computer science principles to create programs that can enhance the quality of life of individuals with disabilities.
Education
Texas A & M University-College Station
Bachelor's degree programMajors:
- Computer Science
Minors:
- Mathematics
GPA:
3.7
College Station H S
High SchoolGPA:
3.5
Miscellaneous
Desired degree level:
Graduate schools of interest:
Transfer schools of interest:
Majors of interest:
- Mathematics and Computer Science
Career
Dream career field:
Computer Software
Dream career goals:
Senior Engineer
Barista
Starbucks Coffee2021 – Present3 yearsWhataburger Team Member
Whataburger2019 – 20201 year
Arts
CSHS Band
MusicCSHS Band Marching Shows from 2017-2019, CSHS UIL Band Concerts 2018-20192017 – 2021
Public services
Volunteering
Texas A&M Kyle Field Volunteering — Volunteer guide for the stand workers2019 – 2019Volunteering
Larry J Ringer Library — Library Volunteer2016 – 2017
Future Interests
Advocacy
Volunteering
Philanthropy
Chadwick D. McNab Memorial Scholarship
Technology advancement opens up many opportunities to enhance the quality of life of marginalized people in our society. As an advocate for people with disabilities, I have always had an interest in finding creative ways in which we can reshape our society to better accommodate their needs. Thus, when I started my first year of college looking to major in Computer Science, it wasn't long before I began researching the different ways in which technology could be used to help individuals with disabilities.
After reaching out and having conversations with other Computer Science students at my university, I found that there were many opportunities for research within the school that tackled the issues I was interested in. These included research on devices that could be used by individuals with conditions such as dementia. The devices would help them have independence in their daily lives without the constant need of a caretaker, but still, be able to detect when they were immobile and in need of help.
Another approach to helping people with disabilities from a technological perspective, and one which I did some work on, is creating programs to help children with apraxia of speech. Childhood apraxia of speech is a speech disorder that I had not heard of until I stumbled upon the research Texas A&M was doing on it. Though it is an uncommon speech disorder, it still has the potential to be improved through technological assistance. The research done at Texas A&M on childhood apraxia of speech entailed creating "speech therapy" games that children could use as at-home practice after their speech therapy sessions.
Inspired by this, I began individual research on childhood apraxia of speech. After watching videos and reading multiple accounts from speech pathologists, I began to form an understanding of CAS and the at-home exercises that could be used as a complement to speech therapy. One such exercise which was cited as being useful was reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr.
Knowing this, I decided to see if I could come up with a small program of my own that would potentially help children with CAS. This resulted in the creation of a story-time program, made using Python, which could help parents of children with apraxia of speech do speech exercises at home. The program allows them to set up a “reading speed,” which would determine how fast each line of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" comes up on the screen. The program also utilizes alternating colors for the text to easily distinguish between which sentence the parent reads and which one the child reads.
The process of researching childhood apraxia of speech and ultimately creating this small program solidified my desire to pursue computer science and use the knowledge I earn to find more ways to innovate and improve the quality of life of individuals with disabilities.