Impactful experiences highlight grad's undergraduate experience

Editor's note: This story is part of a series of profiles of notable spring 2022 graduates.

Ananay Arora has known that he wanted to pursue a career in computer science since he started coding at age 11. In his years as a computer science major in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, many of his successes have been about his time outside of the classroom.

One of those activities that Arora feels is the most important was his founding of the Google Developers Student Club at ASU. The club serves as an additional resource to teach software engineering skills to students.

“Software engineering is a constantly changing industry, and I felt that there is a lot more to be learned outside the classroom,” Arora says. “It took two years of determination and passion to create and grow the club to more than 600 members, and through hands-on workshops every Friday, I accomplished my goal of sharing my knowledge with everyone.”

Arora also has completed two internships with Apple and additionally worked as a researcher in ASU’s Luminosity Lab and in the Laboratory of Security Engineering for Future Computing, known as SEFCOM.

“I’m grateful to have worked as a software engineer and learned from the best engineers in the industry,” says Arora, who hails from New Delhi, India. “Whatever I’ve learned, I’ve made it a personal goal to share it with the community while delivering the best learning experience.”

In the uncertainty of the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, Arora and some of his friends created a website, called ismyinternshipcancelled.com, that tracked internships that had been canceled due to COVID and the companies that were hiring for remote positions.

“My friends and I created the website for fun, but when we took it seriously to fight fake news around company cancellations, we made a real impact,” Arora says. “We had a bunch of interviews from Bloomberg, NPR, The Atlantic, State Press, and more, but most importantly the CEO of Cloudflare doubled their internship class after seeing our website.”

Arora will be returning as an intern at Apple this summer before coming back to ASU and the Luminosity Lab in the fall to complete his master’s degree in computer science as part of ASU’s accelerated 4+1 program and continue work as a researcher in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, one of the seven Fulton Schools.

“Going forward, I aim to build and ship great products to customers,” Arora says. “I'm already grateful to Apple and Luminosity for giving me those engineering and management skills in order to facilitate that. I aspire to work at a big tech company and also pursue entrepreneurship in the future.”