grad alumni stories

Read about how CS alumnus Alireza Shafaei took a look at his grad photo, and decided to create a company around improving the photography retouching process by automating it.

There’s been no navel-gazing by UBC Computer Science alumnus Shehzad Noor Taus Priyo since he made the Top 30 Under 30 list by Forbes Magazine. Or even before that. Priyo graduated from UBC Computer Science in 2020 with a BSc in computer science and mathematics.

Yvonne Coady shares her memories of working on assignments in the computer science lab late at night, and having to perform victory dances upon figuring out a solution to the coding problems she was trying to solve.

Elaine Chang has a passion for learning, growing from different experiences to another, and she’s equally excited about sharing what she knows with others. These traits make her uniquely suited to her work as a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, where she combines her love of technology with business applications to help create cutting-edge software products.

Like so many UBC Computer Science BCS graduates, Tristan Moss has a C.V. worth the envy of many far older than he: an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria, a Bachelor of Computer Science from UBC, software development positions with Kodak, Microsoft, and iQmetrix, and an extensive portfolio of volunteer community service throughout the world.

Looking back on his time as both a Master’s and Ph.D. student at UBC, Paul Kry is struck by the wealth of learning opportunities the department afforded him. Remembering tough courses in computational geometry, computational robotics, and advanced graphics, Paul notes that the UBC grad classes “were very well organized and easy to follow.”

For CS alum Hendrik Kueck, founder of Pocket Pixels of Vancouver, BC, the iPhone display represents the intersection of his passion for aesthetics and his intellectual interest in problem-solving, mapped to his desire to merge the two in fun and functional apps for consumers.

When David He took professor the 314 graphics class, he thought ‘Oh my god, this is what I’m here for! That was the first time in my life when I stayed up for days without sleeping, working on an assignment." The excitement of that discovery propelled David into a co-op placement with Electronic Arts, then considered top in the gaming industry.