Several of Ryan’s professors have hired him as a course assistant for their classes, so he has already had some teaching experience in upper-division computer engineering courses. In one class, he was put in charge of a class project in which he gave assignments, graded them, and ran a weekly laboratory.

In addition to his academic success, Ryan is enjoying life at UC Santa Cruz. He lives off campus and hasn’t had trouble making friends; he says that although most of the students in his classes are a few years older than him, he hasn’t noticed that it makes much difference.

Among his extra-curricular activities, Ryan is a member of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering (SoE) Honors Society, of which he was elected treasurer in 2006. Ryan also worked for a summer as an intern at Altera, a Silicon Valley-based company that is a leading producer of programmable chips.

After graduation, Ryan plans to attend graduate school in computer engineering. His interests include computer vision – programs that emulate certain aspects of human vision, such as face recognition and depth perception — and autonomous systems, which includes robotics (the Computer Engineering Department inaugurated an undergraduate concentration in robotics and control in 2006).