Visualizing Uncertainty

Tara Kola

DREU 2015

Tara Kola

Tara is a rising senior at Tufts University near Boston, where she is majoring in Computer Science, minoring in Chinese, and compulsively dabbling in non-fiction writing, biology, and history. She was supposed to graduate in May 2015, but after a gap year in China, she is now a proud member of the Tufts Class of 2016. During her year away, she interned at Microsoft Research in Beijing, improved her spoken Chinese, backpacked through 11 provinces in China, and wrote a series of articles on the cultural and historical connections between China and India.

It is her love of the intercultural and interdisciplinary life that drew her to Computer Science. In studying Computer Science, she has explored a world where a single problem can be looked at and solved through many disparate or paradoxically conflicting perspectives - just like the human problems of food, clothing, social interaction, etc. that lead to the cuisine, costume, and customs that define unique cultures. She has also been able to adventure into new fields of study through the application of computer science in everything from biology to linguistics to storytelling to epidemiology.

The future is an uncertain place, but it is certain to be filled with lots of problem-solving, yoga, cooking (and eating), biking around Seattle, and frequenting the Emerald City’s excellent farmers’ markets, Chinese markets, vegetarian restaurants, and mountains.