2024-25 President's Scholars

Hasti Abbasi Kenarsari

Dr. Andrew G. Chong President's Scholar

Major: Computer Science

College of Science

Activities: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Fellow at UCLA (Break Through Tech); Director of Logistics at FAST (Forensics and Security Technology); Scheduler/Social Chair SheCodes, Corporate/External Committee Representative at Society of Women Engineers; Ambassador of Maximizing Engineering
Potential, Women in Science and Engineering; CPP Water Polo; CPP Orientation Leader

Hasti fondly recalls time spent listening to the stories of her grandmother, whose poetic recollections of her
family’s history inspired her to seek a future to make her family proud. She chose computer science for its
potential for large-scale positive impact on the lives of others and is particularly interested in developing
innovative assistive software for individuals with severe paralysis, aiming to improve the quality of their
communication and mobility. “In the pursuit of my career, I intend to create a human-computer interface
(HCI) system to serve as an alternate input modality for users. The objective of the system is to analyze the
duration/pattern of the user’s blinks, translating them into mouse clicks. I intend to use machine learning
algorithms to identify meaningful features in blinking frequency.” Hasti has valued the pursuit of leadership
opportunities that encourage collaboration, including competing in Hivestorm, a collegiate cyber defense
team competition.