I am a senior electrical engineer at the University of Notre Dame. I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and have lived in the Midwest of the United States for the entirety of my life. That is, apart from the last year I spent studying abroad at the University of Oxford in England. I also plan to return to the UK to work for Palantir Technologies as a Deployment Strategist in London.
My interests and hobbies are many and varied. I tend to cycle obsessively through hobbies, investing just enough time to develop some level of mastery before moving on. Some good examples are my waning interest in chess and my waxing interest in hobbyist electronics.
I always thought I was pretty good at chess growing up (so do many who perceive themselves as mildly intelligent), but it wasn’t until I lost to the president of my high school’s chess club that I realized how wrong I was. So I started studying. Every night, I would finish my homework around 10pm, then study chess for the next 3ish hours before bed. I did this for a couple months, until I eventually was able to consistently beat that same chess club president. Since graduating high school, I’ve barely kept up with it. This is a pretty common theme in my life as far as my hobbies go: I decide I want to be better at something, then I doggedly pursue self-betterment in that area, and eventually I move on to something else.
I decided to study electrical engineering because I wanted to learn about a field that was very hard to understand on my own. I honestly lucked into how much I enjoyed electrical engineering, but I ultimately chose not to accept an electrical engineering job. After multiple electrical engineering internships, I decided it wasn’t a strong fit.
I am hoping to leave this computer science ethics course with a deeper understanding of the most important arguments to be made on both sides of relevant professional issues today – I am somewhat of an armchair philosopher at heart, and I think this class will be professionally relevant for my work at Palantir.
zachimholte 