user profile avatar

Daniela Martinis

675

Bold Points

1x

Finalist

Bio

I am an Honors Engineering student at Texas A&M and a prospective Computer Science student! My passions lie in utilizing computer science principles to create programs that can enhance the quality of life of individuals with disabilities.

Education

Texas A & M University-College Station

Bachelor's degree program
2021 - 2025
  • Majors:
    • Computer Science
  • Minors:
    • Mathematics
  • GPA:
    3.7

College Station H S

High School
2017 - 2021
  • GPA:
    3.5

Miscellaneous

  • Desired degree level:

  • Graduate schools of interest:

  • Transfer schools of interest:

  • Majors of interest:

    • Mathematics and Computer Science
  • Not planning to go to medical school
  • Career

    • Dream career field:

      Computer Software

    • Dream career goals:

      Senior Engineer

    • Barista

      Starbucks Coffee
      2021 – Present3 years
    • Whataburger Team Member

      Whataburger
      2019 – 20201 year

    Arts

    • CSHS Band

      Music
      CSHS Band Marching Shows from 2017-2019, CSHS UIL Band Concerts 2018-2019
      2017 – 2021

    Public services

    • Volunteering

      Texas A&M Kyle Field Volunteering — Volunteer guide for the stand workers
      2019 – 2019
    • Volunteering

      Larry J Ringer Library — Library Volunteer
      2016 – 2017

    Future Interests

    Advocacy

    Volunteering

    Philanthropy

    Chadwick D. McNab Memorial Scholarship
    Technology advancement opens up many opportunities to enhance the quality of life of marginalized people in our society. As an advocate for people with disabilities, I have always had an interest in finding creative ways in which we can reshape our society to better accommodate their needs. Thus, when I started my first year of college looking to major in Computer Science, it wasn't long before I began researching the different ways in which technology could be used to help individuals with disabilities. After reaching out and having conversations with other Computer Science students at my university, I found that there were many opportunities for research within the school that tackled the issues I was interested in. These included research on devices that could be used by individuals with conditions such as dementia. The devices would help them have independence in their daily lives without the constant need of a caretaker, but still, be able to detect when they were immobile and in need of help. Another approach to helping people with disabilities from a technological perspective, and one which I did some work on, is creating programs to help children with apraxia of speech. Childhood apraxia of speech is a speech disorder that I had not heard of until I stumbled upon the research Texas A&M was doing on it. Though it is an uncommon speech disorder, it still has the potential to be improved through technological assistance. The research done at Texas A&M on childhood apraxia of speech entailed creating "speech therapy" games that children could use as at-home practice after their speech therapy sessions. Inspired by this, I began individual research on childhood apraxia of speech. After watching videos and reading multiple accounts from speech pathologists, I began to form an understanding of CAS and the at-home exercises that could be used as a complement to speech therapy. One such exercise which was cited as being useful was reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr. Knowing this, I decided to see if I could come up with a small program of my own that would potentially help children with CAS. This resulted in the creation of a story-time program, made using Python, which could help parents of children with apraxia of speech do speech exercises at home. The program allows them to set up a “reading speed,” which would determine how fast each line of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" comes up on the screen. The program also utilizes alternating colors for the text to easily distinguish between which sentence the parent reads and which one the child reads. The process of researching childhood apraxia of speech and ultimately creating this small program solidified my desire to pursue computer science and use the knowledge I earn to find more ways to innovate and improve the quality of life of individuals with disabilities.