Reading 00: About Me

Hi! I am Kylie Hausch, a senior Computer Science student at Notre Dame. I am in my final year of the five-year dual-degree engineering program with Saint Mary’s College and Notre Dame. I graduated from Saint Mary’s in May 2017 with a B.S. in Computing and Applied Mathematics. I chose to study Math and Computer Science because of my love for solving puzzles. In high school, math was my favorite subject and I was unsure what I could do with that in the future. One of my teachers encouraged me to consider engineering. When I found out about Saint Mary’s dual degree program, I was excited to discover a way to study both math and engineering. Upon taking the intro to engineering class, I discovered computer science and I could not be happier with my decision. I love the problem solving, logic, and puzzles that computer science challenges me with everyday. I hope to use my degrees to work as a software engineer in the entertainment industry.

I’ve lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan my entire life except for two summers for internships. In the summer of 2016 was an IT intern at AbbVie in North Chicago, Illinois. I worked for the global business analytics group where I created dashboards for bug tracking, tested dashboards, and reengineered the distribution of dashboards to better classify data. In the summer of 2017 I was a Software Development Engineering Intern at Amazon in Seattle Washington. I worked for the Amazon Education team and built an offline mode for children’s reading app and worked on my project management skills.

My hobbies include field hockey, skiing, and watching movies. I also enjoy doing different kinds of puzzles. I am interested in computer graphics, animation, and virtual reality.

I hope in this class to gain a better understanding of some of the hot topics in computer science by discussing the different sides to certain topics and understanding other people’s stances on big issues.

To me, one of the most pressing ethical and moral issues in computer science today is how we handle AI. As computer scientists we must understand that our actions have huge consequences. We are often on a quest to develop the coolest and most exciting new technologies, but we often do not stop to think what negative ramifications these new technologies could have. We do not check, double check and triple check our work we leave for bad people to exploit errors and use our technology for bad. In AI, we leave room for allowing people to teach computers negative qualities and bad things. We are creating technology that if not set up correctly can be used for evil.

One topic that I am very passionate about and hope we discuss in class is women in computing and encouraging women to pursue computer science, along with encouraging men to create a welcoming environment for women. I think tackling the “brogrammer” culture is a huge step that needs to be made.