Name: Shilpa Kulkarni
Class: Graduate Student
Hometown: Enfield, Connecticut

Durham, N. H.– The past few years have proven to be an exciting journey for Shilpa Kulkarni.

It wasn't long ago that Shilpa received her Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunications in her native India. Upon graduating, she landed a job at a software company, where she worked for a year and a half before getting married. After moving to Connecticut with her husband, Shilpa realized she wanted to take her interests in the technology field in new directions, and she decided to explore programs in the area through which she could earn her Master’s degree in Computer Science.

At the time, she had friends who were attending UNH and decided to come and visit the campus in March of 2004.

“When I came to visit UNH, I was very impressed by how approachable the faculty was,” said Shilpa, who met with Dr. Dan Bergeron and Department Chair Phil Hatcher during her first visit to campus.

Since she did not have an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Shilpa learned she would have to take pre-requisites before she could enter the program. During her visit here, she received advice from faculty on which classes to take and where she could take them close to her home in Enfield, Connecticut.

“I spent almost two or three hours talking with Dr. Bergeron. He helped me search for schools so I could take the pre-requisites I needed in Connecticut,” she said.

In the end, said Shilpa, the “approachable” faculty and the research taking place in the department were two of the driving factors that made her choose UNH. And, as her time here has progressed, Shilpa says she's learned that her first impressions of the faculty and program were right on.

Shilpa has completed her first year at UNH, during which she worked as a grader during the fall semester for Dr. Hatcher, and as a teaching assistant during the spring semester for Dr. Elizabeth Varki. This summer she did an internship in genetics at the UNH Hubbard Center for Genome Studies, working on programs to do comparative genomics.

“Now I’m trying to come up with a thesis topic,” she said. “I’m interested in bioinformatics and I’d encourage more people to enroll in that. There’s a great need for customized software in the biology field. There’s so much work that needs to be done in that field.”

Shilpa said she’d encourage others, who don’t have an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, but have an interest in it, not to shy away from the field.

“I’m not from a CS background but I was able to do this with the proper pre-requisites, some of which I got in CT, some at UNH,” she said.

All in all, she says, “it’s been a nice journey.”

- Rachel Purnell, CS Staff

* Want to learn more about what it's like to be a CS graduate student at UNH? E-mail Shilpa Kulkarni with your questions.