Through her participation in a Lego Mindstorm class at the local library at a very young age, freshman at the California Institute of Technology Jana Woo became enamored with computer science and robotics. She fell in love with the hands-on experience of tinkering with Lego bricks and creating a working robot, drawing her towards the world of STEM. 

In the summer after Woo’s freshman year of high school, she was given the opportunity to participate in COSMOS — California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science — which is a four-week-long program for students interested in STEM. Woo distinctly remembers that she and her group at COSMOS created an autonomous robot, which made decisions based on its surroundings. Specifically, Woo’s job was to assemble the robot and use her coding skills to program the robot to accomplish the task.  

Other than the autonomous robot, Woo created many other robots during her time at COSMOS. While at MVHS, Woo also created one of her favorite projects — an app called “Size Up” with her friends. Since it was everyone’s first time building an app, Woo and her friends relied on YouTube videos to make “Size Up,” a network where moms can give their baby’s clothes to other moms.  

“Babies grow really fast and you buy all these new clothes, but they outgrow them so quickly,” Woo said. “When the baby grows out, you want to recycle the clothes, so you pass them on to another mom. Rather than buying all these new clothes, you can just use other clothes that your baby’s only going to be in for a few months.”

At Caltech, Woo finds herself having a support system where she bounces ideas off her friends and her partner, whereas in high school she says there wasn’t a heavy emphasis on a collaborative environment. Woo explains that the collaborative environment and the supportive teacher assistants at Caltech help her through the process of debugging her code, which she describes as the least enjoyable part about computer science. 

“You’re confident in what you do, and then you run it, and then zero tests pass and you’re like, ‘Oh no, I messed up bad,’” Woo said. “You just don’t know what you’re doing wrong. You just keep hitting your head against the wall.”

Despite feeling frustrated at time while debugging her code, Woo describes her passion for coding as a complex puzzle that she enjoys piecing together. She explains that the struggle of trial and error is an essential part of the process. 

“You have to tinker with it. You have to modify the code,” Woo said. “You have to do multiple tests and reruns, and I feel the feeling of having your code run is one of the best feelings ever, especially since it can take days to try and debug something.” 

While Woo describes her interest in computer science and persistence to solve a problem, she also highlights the issue of gender bias in the workplace, where women are often doubted and their work is always double-checked, despite their diligent efforts. She also says that one of the main stigmas around women in computer science is that a woman’s coding capabilities are not the same as a man’s because they are perceived to be less competent.

Woo explains the many positive and negative aspects as a woman in computer science but tells that one of her main goals as a computer scientist is to make a positive impact on someone else’s life. 

“Even if it was just one person, I do want to benefit someone with my work,” Woo said. “I don’t just want to be mindlessly coding every single day for eight hours, I want my work to actually have an impact.”