Alisa Neeman, PhD student in Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was inspired by Professor Sandeep Mitra.

In Alisa’s Words

After a decade as a blue collar worker doing small engine repair, I decided to go back to school, at SUNY College of Brockport, NY. As a returning student, I never expected to major in computer science but Dr. Sandeep Mitra inspired me. For CS1, he’d written some sorting applets and I discovered by accident that I could make one stop with incorrect results. I hesitantly told Dr. Mitra, and he immediately sat me down to recreate the conditions for the bug. When I found the sequence he was very pleased and told the whole class that I could now work for Microsoft! I was just one of quite a few women Dr. Mitra mentored and encouraged. To this day we still correspond and when I visit Brockport I can’t help but think, in wonder, this is where it all began.