Bright Schol­ar, Kian Weimer, is a Com­put­er Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing major. He attends the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa and is expect­ed to grad­u­ate in Spring of 2022.

How has the schol­ar­ship allowed you to do these things: Grad­u­ate on-time, debt-free, launch your career and give back?

This schol­ar­ship allowed me to con­tin­ue my edu­ca­tion with­out wor­ry­ing about the high costs of col­lege. Because I don’t need to earn mon­ey to pay for tuition, I am able to focus on school. I have also been able to take part in intern­ship and research oppor­tu­ni­ties that will be very ben­e­fi­cial in my future career. I hope to one day be in a posi­tion to help oth­ers have a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence, as I have expe­ri­enced first-hand how valu­able and help­ful it can be. 

How are you explor­ing your career and prepar­ing your­self for life after col­lege?

I am always look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to gain expe­ri­ence in my field. In addi­tion to school, I have done research on deep learn­ing med­ical image enhance­ment, and I am now work­ing with oth­er med­ical image pro­cess­ing applications. 

I have also had an intern­ship every sum­mer since I start­ed col­lege. I worked one sum­mer as a man­u­fac­tur­ing engi­neer at Cen­tro before decid­ing to focus on com­put­er sci­ence. The last two sum­mers I worked as a back­end devel­op­er at IBM for the IBM oper­at­ing system. 

I am con­fi­dent these expe­ri­ences will great­ly enhance my career oppor­tu­ni­ties after college.

What is your favorite class and why?

My all-time favorite class was one of my first com­put­er sci­ence class­es, Com­put­er Sci­ence I. I came to col­lege as an unde­clared engi­neer, and this was the class that inspired me to choose my degree path. While it was chal­leng­ing, it exposed me to many dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of com­put­er sci­ence while allow­ing me to cre­ate pro­grams with real-world applications.

Where do you see your­self in five years? 10 years?

In five years, I hope to be work­ing as a soft­ware engi­neer, maybe at IBM where I’ve interned the last two years. I hope to work on some­thing inno­v­a­tive that impacts peo­ple on a dai­ly basis. I also hope to get into real estate invest­ing. I’ve always been inter­est­ed in hous­es and almost went to school to become an architect.

In 10 years, I hope to still be cod­ing and lead­ing a team in build­ing some­thing impor­tant. By that time, I hope my real estate port­fo­lio has grown to include quite a few houses!