Dhruti Sirigibathina

I definitely have to say my family has been a big one. They've constantly been a really important pressure point in terms of just putting myself out there, not really caring about the conclusion or the results, but just continuously putting myself out there and trying new things. I definitely wouldn't be as open if it weren't for my parents, for sure. Even coming to school at Purdue is like 12 hours away driving from Virginia, so they've just always been really open in terms of putting myself out there, trying new things, and just not being afraid. I definitely attribute most of my success to them. Both of my parents are in tech - my dad is at Micron, more on systems, and my mom is more in data analytics at Freddie Mac. They definitely sparked my interest at a very young age, and I'd like to think that I kind of took it into my own hands with the integrated business and engineering degree.

The best career advice I've ever received is probably being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I think it's a big thing that I learned, especially in my first two years, just getting really comfortable with talking to strangers, or getting put in situations where you don't know what to say or you don't know what to do. I think those opportunities and experiences have really helped me grow the most in my recent times, so definitely just getting more comfortable with putting yourself out of the box and putting yourself in situations that are maybe a little bit uncomfortable.

I think as women in STEM and even business, you're always kind of taught to think twice about what you say and choose your words carefully and tread lightly. I think the biggest piece of advice I'd give is to just take up space. Walk into a room and do what you need to do, and be as loud as you need to be, just take up the space you want to take up, and don't worry about who else is there. I wish someone had told me that earlier, so I wouldn't have been as focused on, oh, what are people thinking about me? I need to impress this room of people who are not primarily men, or primarily women. But I think that we need to just go out there and do what we do, and we're gonna get some feedback, and it's gonna be good, and it's gonna be bad, and just take it, keep your head high, and go about your day. I think that's the biggest piece of advice I would give.

I would say, kind of on the more ethical standpoint, AI is awesome, as I'm sure you're aware now. I think making sure AI systems are trustworthy and really reliable for people is a big challenge that we might be facing. We want to be very careful in thinking about accuracy, bias, transparency, all of those things, especially in the industries that I've worked in, which is healthcare or even supply chain. So really making sure that we're building systems that people can actually trust, I think, is going to be a really important challenge moving forward, really just thinking about that ethical AI standpoint.

I think probably the biggest value for me is curiosity. Especially working at the intersection in which I'm in, in terms of AI research and business, curiosity has to be one of my biggest drivers. Technology is constantly evolving, especially in the realm of artificial intelligence, and really staying curious allows me to just keep learning, experimenting, and just building new and different solutions. We can't stop and think, oh, what are people gonna think about this, or whether or not it'll really work. Just being curious about it, I think, has been incredibly helpful for me. As well as just impact. I think everything I work on, technology or not, is related to some kind of real-world impact, whether it's building a system or doing some kind of data analysis. I'm just really motivated by the idea that we can use this technology to help people and help improve processes. So I would say curiosity and impact are my two biggest values or qualities.