Nishi Uppuluri

Year in School
Freshman

Major
CS + Linguistics

Research Interests

Research Mentor
Dr. Heng Ji

Research/Engagement Experience
In high school, I independently worked on developing an NLP-based tool, the Pything tool, that would give elementary school students individualized feedback on their writing skills. I also interned at Carnegie Mellon, where I aided a professor and his team in developing RoboTutor, an intelligent tutoring system intended to teach reading comprehension skills to children in remote areas. Outside of research, I ran writing classes and playgroups for young children during the pandemic, and I taught piano to underprivileged students in my area.

Interests
Natural Language Processing, Computers and Education, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Project Title

How did I get interested in Computer Science?
When I was younger, I often struggled with whether to define myself as a “STEM person” or a “humanities person,” a technical thinker or a creative one. Discovering the broad area of Computer Science through programs such as Girls Who Code helped me realize that there was a way to connect my differing interests. Later on in high school, I realized there were even specific subfields within CS dedicated to how computers process language and how humans interact with computers, which led me to my current interests in NLP, ML, and AI.

What social interests matter to me?
I am very passionate about finding ways to use technology to increase access to education, especially for younger students.

What is my most impactful college experience?
The WIE Orientation was super impactful and really set the tone for my college experience thus far. I loved being able to meet other women in STEM and learn from the older mentors about all the opportunities for RSOs and research at UIUC.

These are a few of my favorite things!
The color pink, reading, Gilmore Girls, art supplies, and spending time with my friends and sister

Research Description
For my research, I will be working on the Alexa Prize at the BLENDER Lab. I will be working on making the bot identify entities and link common phrases that they get as input from users to output specific articles and media.

Biography
Nishi Uppuluri is a freshman studying CS + Linguistics from Westchester, NY. On campus, she's involved with HackIllinois, ACM, and the Alpha Omega Epsilon Engineering Sorority, and she's a PM for CS124H.