Saharsh Goenka

Outstanding Graduate Saharsh Goenka explains he realized he was on the right career path when he could apply his computer programming skills to solve personal problems. 

“For instance, I created a script in my first year of college to notify me when a class I wanted to register for had an open seat,” Goenka shares. 

Goenka counts sunhacks — a collaborative effort to build an active hacker community at ASU — among his most impactful accomplishments. 

As a first-year student, he organized a team to compete in the sunhacks hackathon. In his senior year, he became one of the group’s lead directors, helping to double participation in its major hackathon to over 600 participants. 

“I faced many challenges, from managing a team of 20 organizers to successfully raising $40,000 in funding with the support of ASU and sponsors like Amazon, Google, Garmin, General Dynamics, and State Farm,” he says. “It was very fulfilling to witness it all come together on the day of the event,” 

His involvement in research deepened in his third year when he joined ASU’s PERSUE Lab. His work there included collecting and analyzing data for a research paper submitted to a conference focusing on the security and privacy of Zoom Marketplace apps. 

Goenka also cofounded a consulting group with six software developers. The team completed two projects, one with B:Side Capital and another with the Vanderbilt Financial Group. He also completed internships with Nutanix and the ASU SolarSPELL Initiative.

He shared the knowledge and skills he acquired in roles as a computer science teaching assistant and a member of Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors. 

Among his ASU teachers, he credits faculty members Rakibul Hasan and Christopher Myers with providing much of the valuable knowledge he gained. 

Hasan, an assistant professor of the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, offered mentorship and research opportunities that helped him understand how research functions, how to collect and analyze data, and how to submit research papers for publication. 

Myers, an instructor in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, provided Goenka with opportunities to create a consulting group, giving him insights into designing and developing business startups and working on real-world industry projects. 

“A memorable project I worked on was developing the registration portal for sunhacks,” Goenka recalls. I had a very tight deadline, but I successfully created the application, which ended up having over 1,900 users, with over 800 concurrent users on the event day.” 

That project and similar hands-on learning experiences have solidified one of his major career aspirations.

“I plan to create a startup at the forefront of emerging technologies,” Goenka says. “I would love to be a part of engineering achievements and innovations in machine learning, cybersecurity, and quantum computing.

Read about other exceptional graduates of the Fulton Schools’ spring 2025 class here.