The National Center for Women & IT (NCWIT) Awards for Aspirations in Computing chose junior Preethi Venkataraman as the winner of the National Award for Aspirations in Computing. NCWIT helps celebrate diversity in computing by honoring young women at the high-school level for their computing-related achievements and interests. Preethi will be receiving her award during the South Florida Regional Aspirations in Computing Award Banquet Saturday, April 30.
Mrs. Marisa Behar, Preethi’s AP Computer Science teacher, encouraged the student to apply for this award because of her computing-related aspirations, leadership, good academic history and plans for higher education in computer science.
Preethi completed University Level Computer Science I and II at iMacs, the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, where she learned languages such as Haskell, Scheme, Python, and Java.
She also attended the Harvard iOS App Development summer program, where she learned how to create apps using the programming language Swift. During the seminar, she made a game called “Fifteen Puzzle.” In this app, the user must sort fourteen tiles, labeled from one to fourteen with one empty tile by swapping the numbered tiles with the empty tile.
Preethi did not only take classes for programming, however. This year, along with juniors Ramiro Steinmann and Donovan Ye, she started a Programming Team at Heritage. As a result, she has been able to teach her programming knowledge to other students.
