Shankar Padmanabhan

What made UT the right choice for you?
In the mathematics and computer science departments, people are more cooperative than competitive. There’s a lot of very smart people, all helping each other. I did a lot of research — I’m developing methods to enable language models to be lifelong learners and I’m interested in building AI systems with strong mathematical capabilities. My professors were all extremely helpful, always willing to answer my questions and open to discussing my ideas.

What made your time at UT memorable?
I really liked studying in the Perry-Castañeda Library and I took advantage of the computational resources available on campus. For fun, I was on the Ultimate Frisbee team. The campus is wonderful, and the people are all so friendly.

How did scholarships support your academic journey?
My scholarship made life much easier, saving my family a lot of money on tuition and saving us all a lot of worry. I’m very grateful for that.

How do donors make a difference in a student’s life?
Donors make it possible for many students to go to a university in the first place. Their gifts give students the chance to focus on academics and not have to take out loans. Scholarships can be life-changing and can help students become incredibly successful.

What’s next for you?
I’ll be pursuing my Ph.D. in computer science at Cornell University, specializing in natural language processing.