Meera Whitson, who has a 3.97 GPA and is in the Honors program, is fascinated by the intersection of computer science and linguistics—her two major areas. Much of her academic work has involved connecting the two, including a project of a neural network that converts text to color and a research project on the potential applications of new artificial intelligence technologies.
“Meera has been an interdisciplinary force,” says Professor Benjamin Hescott, senior associate dean of academic programs and student experience at Khoury. She is prepared to develop software for a global userbase, paying particular attention to language. When she interned at Cambly, a Y Combinator language education start-up in San Francisco, Meera began an initiative to improve the use of pluralization on the platforms, as plural words are used differently in other languages.
Meera is also committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Professor Jonathan Ball from the computer science department says her work on Covey.Town, an open-source, virtual meeting space, incorporated these concepts in unique features she developed with the explicit goal of inclusivity. In her work on a hate speech detection project, co-op faculty member Priyanka Bishnoi says Meera “applied her skillset in data science, natural language processing, and forensic linguistic methodologies to develop a program that can detect hate speech on an online platform,” showcasing the power of an interdisciplinary education.
Part of the Northeastern University Symphony Orchestra for four years, Meera joined the e-board her first semester, and for two years has been the main point of contact for the organization of about 100 students. She was previously librarian, a TA for Discrete Structures, and an intramural spikeball player.
Meera is proudest of the work she’s done on her three co-ops—the previously mentioned Cambly, PowerAdvocate (now Wood Mackenzie) in Boston, and HubSpot in Cambridge. “By the end of my time at each company, I had made a concrete impact on the tech stack and/or company processes,” she says. “It was important to me to get experience working at companies of different sizes. These diverse experiences were invaluable and have all made me a much stronger engineer.”
After graduation, Meera will continue her work at HubSpot as a software engineer.
Professor Hescott says, “Truly, she is a force to be reckoned with.” Undoubtedly, one with a very promising future.
