How One UChicago CS Alum Uses Technology to Tackle Inequality
As part of the “Meet a UChicagoan” series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community, University of Chicago news featured Devshi Mehrotra, who graduated in June 2019 with a joint bachelor’s and master’s in computer science. Through compileHer, the student group she founded to introduce middle school girls to technology, and work with the Cook County Public Defender's Office and the UChicago Institute of Politics, Mehrotra has enthusiastically looked for ways to combine CS with public service.
Devshi Mehrotra doesn’t aspire to design the next big app or social platform. Instead, she wants to leverage technology to tackle issues ranging from criminal justice reform to income inequality, while inspiring communities around the world to do the same.
“The set of priorities that drive technological research and innovation today are not inclusive of the challenges facing large parts of society, especially not racial minorities and low-income communities,” said Mehrotra, who graduated in June from the University of Chicago with a joint bachelor’s and master’s in computer science. “I see computer science education as a tool to encourage individuals from diverse backgrounds to draw from their unique set of experiences in building products that uplift the communities they personally care about.”
Mehrotra is spending the summer as a researcher at Stanford Law School working with artificial intelligence—technology she will continue to explore this fall as part of a master’s program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of the world’s most renowned institutions of technology.
Learn more about Mehrotra's time at UChicago in the full profile by Emily R. Ehret, and read about compileHer activities including their 2018 and 2019 dreamHer hackathons and this spring's superpowHer tech capstone.
