Alumni News

What STS Majors Are ĢƵ With Their Degrees

Karina Shah

AI Masters at Georgia Tech and Avanade Internship

Karina Shah, '26 reports: Fall 2026, I'm starting the OMSCS program at Georgia Tech, specializing in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, to gain a deep technical understanding of CS and AI. Right now, I'm also an AI Engineering Intern at Avanade, a consulting firm whose slogan is "do what matters." The work involves technical consulting and AI deployment for clients, and it's given me a good sense of what it actually takes to move AI from a concept into something that works in a real organization. STS is where the two sides of this come together. It trained me to ask different questions than a purely technical background would — about who's affected by a system, what assumptions are built into it, what the historical or political context is. I bring that into coding, data analysis, and AI architecture, not as an afterthought but as part of how I think through the work.
Kayla Turnage at Sen. Warnock's Atlanta office

Intern with Senator Warnock

Kayla Turnage ('24) worked in the Atlanta Office of U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock in summer 2024. She reports: I learned and experienced so much while working with the Senator’s Team! I was one of only five interns selected nationally for the Session II Summer Program. My primary duties included communicating with constituents, recording their concerns, and compiling reports for senior staff to review. I also developed a policy presentation with my fellow interns about establishing broadband infrastructure in rural Georgia to expand access to telemedicine.
Albert Fattal

From STS to the Fed

Albert Fattal ('19) was a nontraditional student at CPP, having numerous years of working experience before enrolling in Science, Technology & Society. He was drawn to STS because he realized it offered a good basis for exploring his research interests in Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain, while being supported by the program’s implementation of CPP’s “learning by doing” approach to undergraduate research.
Anastasia Zamora-Ortiz

Building Trades Council Grants Administrator

Anastasia Zamora-Ortiz ('18) is a Grants Administrator with the Los Angeles and Orange Counties Building Trades Council's non-profit, The Apprenticeship Readiness Fund. She says about her STS degree: "My degree plays a vital role in my career, particularly with this organization. With STS, I can spot patterns in politics, economics, and data trends to predict the elements that influence when our apprentices get assigned to projects. It has also allowed me to take historical context as a juxtaposition for what is going on locally and in federal administration."

Chrisopher O'Hara

From STS to two PhDs

Since his undergraduate days at CPP, Christopher O’Hara ('15) had an interdisciplinary and international perspective. He has continued to grow in these dimensions. In October 2024, he received a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from University of Tokyo, where he is a researcher and faculty member working in collaboration with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. Prior to that, he received a PhD in Engineering in Mathematics and Computer Science from Eindhoven University of Technology (in the Netherlands) in October 2021. In his current position with University of Tokyo, Chris’s team is designing open-source space stations.