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Jumanah Almajnouni’s resume lists the various programming languages she has learned throughout her years at UC Irvine in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS): JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Python, Java and C++. Yet she’ll be the first to say you can’t rely on a resume alone when trying to land your first job. “Saying that you learned a certain language is not sufficient,” says the software engineering major, who will graduate on June 20. “What have you built with it?”

A mother moves her young family from Korea to the United States. Years later, she finds herself struggling to stay involved in her children’s education. She’s not sure how to support their extracurricular learning, especially given that she doesn’t speak fluent English. She hopes to find an engaging educational resource.

When a mentor first suggested looking into UC Irvine for graduate school because of its strong program in software engineering, Nenad Medvidović still wasn’t sure what he wanted to study — and he had no idea where Irvine was. Originally from the former Yugoslavia (now Montenegro), Medvidović had only been in the United States for a few years. Fast forward to today, and Medvidović is an internationally recognized leader in software engineering. He serves as chair of the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science within the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC, where he has taught since 1999.. He joined USC after earning his master’s and Ph.D. degrees from UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). Earlier this month, he was inducted into the ICS Hall of Fame in recognition of his contributions to the field of software development, including his landmark paper with Yuriy Brun, “An Architectural Style for Solving Computationally Intensive Problems on Large Networks.” Here, Medvidović talks about what brought him to the U.S., his original career goal and why he’s often up at 4:30 a.m., and what he loves best about working in academia.

As the daughter of immigrants, Letsy Cahue-Flores would often act as a translator for her parents, helping them communicate with store clerks or read through various documents. “My most memorable experiences, however, have been interpreting in health facilities, places with an ongoing problem of inadequately informing non-English speakers about their or their children’s health status and options when translation services are unavailable,” says Cahue-Flores. “This accessibility barrier was the catalyst that encouraged me to research fields that would combine my interests in healthcare and computer science.” Her research led her to health informatics, a multidisciplinary field focused on leveraging technology for improved healthcare outcomes.

From playing video games as a kid to developing his own games in high school, Matthew Knight has always been passionate about gaming. Now, as a graduating senior in the game design and interactive media (GDIM) program, Knight is ready to enter the game development world and craft immersive gaming experiences with what he’s learned at UCI. 

Aaron Trammell, in his new book The Privilege of Play, digs up the early roots of exclusion in gaming, exploring how the history of white masculinity in hobby gaming created systemic barriers to inclusivity.