Do you want to start by introducing yourself with your name, year, major, pronouns and hometown?

I'm Kish. I'm a junior studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. My pronouns are he/him, and my hometown is Chicago.

What committees have you been on in the past, and what are you in right now?

In Fall 2020, I was in Career Exploration. Then, I became Director [of Career Exploration] last semester, and then this semester, I am the current President.

When and how did you choose your major?

So about how I chose EECS, It started a really long time ago in middle school--my parents and my cousin would always show me all this stuff and they would have me do these random coding exercises. It's kind of weird, but I was like, “Okay, this is decently cool.” So I stayed on this path and then I kept doing some more things in high school. I studied more math in high school, which I also thought was cool. And so when it came to the time to choose a major, EECS or computer science was a very natural option to me. So I just picked that, and I guess one of the reasons I liked it was because I'm very much a hands-on person. I like to tinker with things, and the ability to make changes to code and see the outcome was always really appealing to me.

You mentioned tinkering with stuff–do you have hobbies relating to that or in general?

I like a lot of outdoors stuff, so I like fishing, mountain biking, and all of those involve a lot of tinkering. I used to modify my bikes back in the day. For example, I had this carbon fiber bike and I added suspension to it, like hydraulic suspension. That was really cool. So tinkering with things like that, or I’d replace a wheel if it got broken or something. That's partially where my fondness of tinkering with things comes from. It’s the same thing with fishing. You set up the line and catch the fish, and it's relaxing. It's a good time to just chill with friends. Other hobbies include geography, so a fun fact: when I was a kid, I lived in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and I only had this one toy. He was this talking globe, and so basically all my waking hours back then I'd just play with this thing, and I learned all the capitals of all the countries. Fun party trick, so I just know too much about geography now to be honest. Also I enjoyed running. I got into that over the past year or so. Same thing with lifting a little bit. Just fun exercise. It’s nice to see progress there. Those are most of my hobbies. I also like baking desserts. I’m a big dessert guy.

What was the last thing you baked?

The last thing I baked was cookies.

What are your professional interests, and how did you get into those fields?

My main professional interest is software engineering and entrepreneurship as a whole. Some experience I have in those areas is, over the summer after freshman year, I interned at a startup called Squishy Robotics as a software engineering intern, and I was the only software engineer at the company. So it was cool from both an engineering perspective, as well as the business and entrepreneurship perspective. Because while I was working on projects such as revamping their user interface for firefighting robots, I was also working on client calls and I was working on creating manuals and documentation for the firefighters. For context, what Squishy Robotics is is they make these robots that can be deployed into hazardous situations so firefighters don't have to go in there themselves. That was a really cool experience because I basically got to work on the entire stack of really technical things, and then more business and the softer skills. The summer after that, I interned at a larger startup, a much later stage startup named Flexport that manages shipping logistics for larger companies. Think of it as UPS for stuff that doesn't fit into a truck. So essentially, what I did there as a software engineering intern is I worked on their billing system, namely I revamped the tool that allows them to invoice clients for particular services. For example, if your shipment was in the warehouse for two days here, then you’re gonna be billed $2,000 for that. So I revamped that system to allow for much more efficient use, because as you can imagine, there'd be a ton of different charges they'd have to invoice for. It'd be a pain to have to do every single one independently, so we had the features that allowed for bulk actions on these items instead. It was a cool experience. I got to work with product people and design people on that, so it was a really cross-functional role because it's very consumer-facing and important to what they do.

It's really cool to hear how your entrepreneurship interests play into that because they're both startups. How do you use statistics in both of those experiences? Did you find that it informs more of the theory rather than the application?

I'll talk about my Squishy Robotics role, because to be honest, I didn't use [statistics and data science] very much in my most recent role. Squishy Robotics involved a lot like NumPy and Pandas, so it's not really extreme data science in any sense. But there were a lot of problems when I first arrived with how they would display data. Like they had an automated sort of ETA system for firefighters so they could understand what's going on in a certain robot, and so what I basically did there is used some of the techniques I learned from my classes to make better looking plots that would scale in different ways and that would actually be useful to read. As you can imagine, with all these different things it's not always useful to just plot the information as it is–sometimes you want to scale it, sometimes you want to manipulate how it looks. So that was probably the main takeaway from a data science perspective that I got from that.

What kind of class experiences did you have going into your Squishy Robotics internship? It sounded like you worked on a whole bunch of technical elements.

To be honest, I'd only taken CS61A, CS61B, CS70, all the basic stuff. I had also done a research project involving data science my freshman year before the internship, so that taught me a lot of skills that were relevant, mostly just the plotting skills, the ability to use NumPy, and not have things explode. This research project was about urban encroachment in Mumbai, like understanding consumer complaints, but it was a bit over my head at the time. I still learned a lot from it though.

What other campus involvements do you have other than SAAS?

I'm in the Blue and Gold Yearbook. In the past, I was on their internal team, and now I'm one of their technology members, which basically is just a group of people who work on maintaining the website for Blue and Gold. Besides that, I'm also part of the Sage Mentorship Project. I just joined this semester, I haven't really started that much, but I’m looking forward to it. In the past, I was also on the rocketry team.

How did you find out about the club, and why did you decide to join?

I found out about the club honestly just by looking through the list of clubs. I think it was this one website, I don't remember which website it was, but I found out about it and I was like, “Okay, this seems sort of cool. I'm interested in statistics, but more so data science.” I want to learn how to become better at data science stuff because as an EECS major, you don't take too many data classes in specific. So I applied to CX, got in, and just kept going from there.

What's your favorite past committee or position that you've been in?

As someone who's only been in CX and now currently is the President, basically the only complete experience I have at the moment is CX Director. So I'd say that was a pretty cool experience because me and my co-director made a lot of changes. So seeing all those changes go through really well, like hammering down on the CX family system, adding resume reviews and all this stuff, it was really cool to see the impact that it had on people, and the changes are still being continued this semester. So that's really nice to see.

What would you say is your favorite SAAS semester? Is it this semester now that everything's back?

Yeah, I’d definitely say this semester just because of everything being back in person. I think a lot of things are going really well, and people are really taking advantage of the systems we have, and it's really great to see.

Why did you stay in SAAS after your first semester? What drew you back in?

I would say I stayed in SAAS for the community. So essentially the story I always tell is: my Big, Jessica, introduced me to the CS170 study group back in Fall 2020. It was a super helpful and chill group, and I got to meet a lot of people on leadership. By talking with them after studying for CS170 I felt like I was part of the whole organization. I’d stick around and think these are cool people, I like hanging out with them, and it's good to study with people. That was the first thing that really made me stay in the club.

What is your proudest accomplishment in SAAS thus far?

I'd say it's definitely the revamp of our client sourcing process for Data Consulting and IA. Basically, over the summer, we got all the members together and we told them about this new sourcing plan where they would all source from 25 different clients each week, send out emails, and then we were really on top of communication and tried to get replies within 24 hours. And then we had a ton of client calls over the summer, and I think we managed it and were really organized throughout the entire process, and what this led to was that before even the semester started, we already had all of our projects essentially finalized and we were able to, for the most part, get all the data and all the details needed to start the project finalized by recruitment. So this year, we were able to really get off to a good start for DC which was a problem point in the past.

How has SAAS helped you with your career and professional development?

It's really helped a lot with soft skills because for directors and now as President, you have to talk to a lot of people and you have to work under a lot of uncertainty. So dealing with all of those is something you don’t really do in a typical college curriculum, rather you're always told what to do. But in these leadership positions, you have to actually process information and make decisions that you may or may not know the outcome to, and you just have to use your best judgment to decide what's going on. That's something that's been really useful to me because in the past, I've always just started taking classes and just did whatever essentially, going along with the flow. But I think that has also helped me in interviews and stuff because now I have more to talk about, I know how to present myself a little better in interviews. The other aspect of it is it's also just really motivating to be around high-performing people, which there are a lot of in SAAS. When you're seeing everyone doing really great research and great internships, all this stuff motivates you to do the same. Like if these guys are getting out there every single day, then why am I not gonna go after it?

What's your favorite SAAS memory so far?

My favorite SAAS memory is probably basically every semester, the leadership team has a watch party for all the new member applications, so this was a really interesting, exciting experience because it was the first time when a ton of people were all in the same place. It was really cool seeing everyone and it was really a great time just to connect with everyone and laugh and read through the apps.

Building off of that, how'd you make friends with the people in SAAS?

Over the past year, I think it was through a lot of studying and whatnot, like the CS170 study group, and then there's our spontaneous hang outs. It's like, “Yo, we're going out tonight, pull up!” And then I pull up and people pull up and then you talk to them, and you get dinner afterwards. It's cool. Also, it’s just other random hangouts, like you have to go do this and go get dinner and just putting yourself out there is very important for making friends. Also coffee chats and donut bots were also pretty key factors in meeting people. House system too. Our house system was great. These days, you’re always running into people, and there’s so many events that you're just constantly talking to people, and so you keep relationships alive through that.

So the three SAAS values, as you know, are Community, Exploration, and Mentorship. What's your favorite one, and what does it mean to you?

I’d definitely say community because the community here is really supportive. I think that's probably one of the most important things in a club because you're always technically able to explore on your own, and you can always find one or two mentors somehow through some means. But, I think community is one of those things that you can't replace. And so being able to talk to anyone in the club, like you know I'm stuck on this homework problem, or what you think about this idea, has been really valuable. It's just really good to have a group of people that are just down to do anything, like random spontaneous dinners and trips, so it’s definitely the community. The community here is very tightly knit, especially for a club of this size. That's something I really appreciate.

As someone who's revamped major components of DC and CX, and as the President, what's your personal vision for SAAS going forward in future semesters?

My personal vision for SAAS is that we can continue to be a tight knit club, get even closer to each other through our events, and have more events that are a bit more grandiose, more fun. But, we should also instill more tradition into SAAS because a lot of the programs that we have, like Big/Little and houses, are still new. I think the sooner we can get to a point where these become really traditional things for SAAS, like deeply ingrained into our culture, it would be really valuable and keep people closer to the organization as a whole. Also, just maintain the quality of committee work. In all the committees, over the past summer, we've really tried to up that a lot, and I think we're doing a good job of maintaining it so far. I really want the club to keep putting out good work, especially for DC and RP projects, as those are all super valuable. I also want to bolster our alumni network a bit more. We have an alumni channel on Slack, and we're working on events to incorporate our alumni into the club a little bit more. And then we also want to alleviate some of the more bureaucratic things that have been part of SAAS in the past, like we have formally removed membership dues forever at this point. We haven't done this yet, but we're envisioning a future where we can increase the intensity of returning member applications. We really want people that once they join SAAS, they're here to stay. We want to really improve all those aspects in terms of member retention, and also just reduce stress about the whole process.

What advice would you give to newer SAAS members, such as people who just joined or people that joined in remote semesters like me?

My biggest advice is to put yourself out there. Go to the events, stay at the events, and talk to people you haven't met before. And take advantage of the systems we have, like the coffee chat system, donut bot system, Big/Little, and houses. There are so many systems in SAAS that are intended to bring people together outside the context of committee work, which may or may not necessarily lead to connections that people are looking for. So by having these systems we really want to make this not just a club where people come, do their work, and then go off and do whatever, but a club where people can work hard, play hard, and enjoy each other's company. That's my biggest advice. That's what has led to the most success for me and I'm sure that's what will lead to the most success for anyone else–put yourself out there, make friends, and maintain connections.

Favorite class in your major and outside your major?

My favorite class in my major is CS172. It’s a tricky class, but it was very interesting. It was about finite state automata and Turing machines, so it’s very theoretical and kind of out there. To be honest, it’s not very useful, unless you're doing research, which I'm not doing, so the actual value of the course is a bit questionable. But from a theory perspective, it was very nice. I love math that works out in really cool ways. Honestly, a lot of these ideas of Turing machines were absolutely brilliant, like how did someone back in the 50s think of this? This is crazy. And then outside my major, it’d probably be PSYCH2. It's just the Intro to Psychology class for non-majors, and it's interesting. I’d learn about how the brain works, what causes all sorts of things that happen, how the brain evolved over millions of years, and it was just really cool.

Favorite professor?

I get a lot of hate for this, but Paul Hilfinger–thought he was pretty solid. I thought he was just hilarious. He’d just make random jokes about nothing during the lectures or some nerdy thing, and it was really endearing. Also, I just liked his attitude, this very no BS attitude towards learning things and getting your work done.

Favorite Berkeley memory?

Honestly, there’s too many to count. If I had to give a specific one... so this is back in Fall 2019 where there was a week when the power went out. School was canceled for the week and just the absolute most goon stuff happened that week, like random trips to SF at 11pm that never ended and just hanging out in the dorms doing absolutely whatever. That was just a really kind of wild week. I think those are the sort of weeks that are really unplanned and spontaneous and where anything can happen. I think those are really good moments to look back at because they don't happen very often.

Okay, favorite spot on campus that more people should know about?

I would say Sutardja Dai Hall for sure. The benches outside are great, and the inside is also wonderful. It’s close to Northside which has decent restaurants during the day.

Is it also your favorite place to study on campus?

Yeah.

Prettiest building on campus?

I would say probably either East Asian library or Doe library. I like Doe because it’s very traditional looking, and the East Asian library is very eccentric and flashy.

Ugliest building?

Wurster Hall definitely. It's just so gross. There’s barely any windows and it looks dirty from the outside. It's just not the vibe.

Favorite bathroom to use on campus?

The one that I would use the most often is Sutardja Dai because that's usually where I’m at. But there's also this one in MLK, you have to go down a few random hallways, but it's very clean, so it's also a nice place.

Favorite library on campus?

It used to be Stacks, but now Stacks is not very hot for some reason. So now I'd probably say Moffitt because you can talk. Actually, probably just Moffit. Fourth floor. Five is beat because you can't talk.

Favorite restaurant?

That's a great question, actually. I don’t think about it too often. My favorite restaurant is probably D’yar. It’s this middle eastern place on Southside. They have very good hot sauce. I love Middle Eastern food, so let's go D’yar.

Favorite boba shops?

I'm not a big boba connoisseur myself. I usually just frequent Feng Cha because that’s where everyone else goes.

Is there anything you want to elaborate on, or anything you want to plug for members in general?

Yeah! Do the coffee chats and do the Professor coffee chats. We have a lot of systems out here that help connect you with our SAASies and the external world too, so take advantage of it. And as Skyler said in the general channel, don't be a bum.