From Mentee to Mentor

In June 2019, a team of high school students from the NPS International School used Python to develop a management system for a neighborhood restaurant in their hometown of Singapore. This group project changed Bipasha Sengupta’s life, finding that it was the spark for her passion for computer science.

“While I was coding, I realized I enjoyed learning it. I just looked at the time, and it was already six hours in, and I was like, ‘Wow, I really like doing this,’” said Sengupta, now a fifth-year undergraduate student completing her final quarter studying computer science at the University of California, Davis.

Sengupta has taken that initial spark and run with it at UC Davis, gaining hands-on experience with human-computer interaction studies and data privacy projects, and finding meaning in guiding fellow students. Now, as she prepares to graduate, she reflects on how mentorship and research have shaped her journey.

Gravitating to Roles of Guidance

As a student under India’s national Central Board of Secondary Education, Sengupta completed high school at the NPS International School with a curriculum emphasizing small class sizes, STEM courses, a holistic learning experience and academic excellence. 

After traveling thousands of miles to attend UC Davis, Sengupta arrived on campus in 2020 — a challenging year to be far from home. Missing her family, Sengupta was introduced to the Indian Student Association Mentorship program as a mentee.

“I was very homesick. I don’t think there were a lot of people who understood that, but my mentors really understood it, because they were also going through it,” she said.

In her first year, Sengupta was shy, overwhelmed by classes stuffed with hundreds of students and new to the concept of teaching assistants. Having a mentor was a large component of her growth.

“As a first-year, a lot of my problems were solved by my mentors. It’s easier for me to talk to someone around my age,” said Sengupta. “As I talked to different people, I realized it’s more common than I thought, so I wanted to become a mentor. I would be able to give back what I gained.”

Giving Back

As a third-year, Sengupta became a first-year Aggie Connections peer mentor, where she advised 25 new students by providing personalized leadership and connecting them to campus resources.

“I’ll be honest, the mentorship program has been one of my best experiences at UC Davis, apart from academics and research, simply because I made that human connection with a lot of first-year students.”.

She also engages in other extracurricular activities in computer science. She is a director of outreach for the Davis Computer Science Club and a finance director for Sac Hacks, an intercollegiate hackathon in the Sacramento area. Sengupta can manage all these roles because of her supportive peers.

“It’s really important to have a great team that is very understanding. That’s how I’m managing my clubs and undergraduate research assistant position,” Sengupta said. 

Reaching for Research

Sengupta’s passion for computer science has amplified at UC Davis, mostly thanks to research. In fact, Sengupta decided to pursue research before tapping into upper-division courses because she wanted to understand the difference between knowing a subject and practicing it.

Her experience in research began as she attempted to figure out what to do in computer science. Data science? Data analytics? Software engineering? When she was a third-year student, Sengupta set her sights on improving her skills with research to build a comprehensive grasp of the various computer science subjects.

The Undergraduate Research to PhD mentoring program, or UR2PhD — an off-campus opportunity with the Computing Research Association — is dedicated to increasing mentored research experience to sustain student interest in research. The program helped Sengupta become a mentor in computer science at UC Davis, working with Women in Computer Science, a UC Davis student chapter dedicated to supporting women in the tech industry. 

This participation connected her to research opportunities with Associate Professor Hao-Chuan Wang and Professor Matt Bishop both of computer science. 

Under Wang, she worked to develop an interactive three-person video game to analyze user behavior and conduct user studies to leverage human-centered design principles and enhance human-computer interaction. Currently, under Bishop, Sengupta is developing Python scripts to anonymize sensitive data to reduce data breaches and enhance privacy.

“It’s so valuable to have a perspective outside the classroom and hands-on training when you’re working under someone,” Sengupta said.

Sengupta will carry her mentors and research experience in high regard as she graduates this winter quarter (she participated in the June 2024 commencement). Communicating with mentors in research and being a mentor taught Sengupta that a second perspective does good to strengthen connections.

“What Davis has given me is the support of being part of a team. Getting connected with the right resources has helped with my confidence. I feel like I’ve come a long way.”