Ananay Arora

Ananay Arora has known that he wanted to pursue a career in computer science since he started coding at age 11. During his years as a computer science major in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, many of his successes have been about his time outside of the classroom.

One of the activities that Arora feels is the most important was his founding of the Google Developers Student Club at ASU. The club serves as an additional resource to teach software engineering skills to students.

“Software engineering is a constantly changing industry, and I felt that there is a lot more to be learned outside the classroom,” Arora says. “It took two years of determination and passion to create and grow the club to more than 600 members and through hands-on workshops every Friday, I accomplished my goal of sharing my knowledge with everyone.”

Arora also has completed two internships with Apple and worked as a researcher in both ASU’s Luminosity Lab and in the Laboratory of Security Engineering for Future Computing, known as SEFCOM.

“I’m grateful to have worked as a software engineer and learned from the best engineers in the industry,” Arora says. “Whatever I’ve learned, I’ve made it a personal goal to share it with the community while delivering the best learning experience.”

In April 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic when uncertainty was high, Arora and some of his friends created the website  ismyinternshipcancelled.com to help students track internships that had been canceled due to the pandemic. The site also listed the companies that were hiring for remote positions.

“My friends and I created the website for fun, but when we took it seriously to fight fake news around company cancellations, we made a real impact,” Arora says. “We had a bunch of interviews from Bloomberg, NPR, The Atlantic, State Press, and more, but most importantly the CEO of Cloudflare doubled their internship class after seeing our website.”

Arora will be heading back to Apple as an intern this summer before returning to ASU and the Luminosity Lab in the fall to complete his master’s degree in computer science as part of ASU’s accelerated 4+1 program and continue work as a researcher.

“Going forward, I aim to build and ship great products to customers,” Arora says. “I’m already grateful to Apple and Luminosity for giving me those engineering and management skills in order to facilitate that. I aspire to work at a big tech company and also pursue entrepreneurship in the future.”

Read about other exceptional graduates of the Fulton Schools’ Spring 2022 class here.