Jai Sankar
What are your professional interests in the future? What made you interested in this field in the first place?
So professionally, I definitely want to go into a field that's primarily focused around some sort of data science and machine learning. I want to be able to apply a lot of statistics concepts to that. I want to primarily focus more on the modeling side and the inference side, rather than a lot of other data analyst positions that work more on the data cleaning and the building of a data pipeline instead. Definitely, professionally, data science with more of a modeling and causal inference type of specialization.
How did you find out about SAAS initially, and what made you want to join?
If I had the option, I would have joined way earlier, probably my first semester freshman year.
Favorite SAAS semester you've been in?
Every single semester gets a little bit better and better. So I'd like to say this semester, because SAAS has just literally been growing as a club. Especially coming back in person was really great. Because it got better and better every semester. And it's my final senior year semester, so I would definitely say this semester so far has been my favorite SAAS semester.
Do you have a favorite SAAS memory?
After we formed those 10 people, we would just run it every week, and we invited a bunch of people from the club. It just became such a big weekly thing and almost like a cult. It was a very fun way to spend pandemic semesters.
You’ve been in SAAS for a while now, is there a specific reason why you’ve continued to return?
I'd say the main reason I've stayed in SAAS is because of the people. Obviously, the stuff we do in the club is really cool; I really like the different committees. How you can specialize in whatever you want was one big factor. But the main reason I've stayed here this long is just because everyone seems willing to help each other in SAAS. It's just a very wholesome group of people. The club in general has a very strong sense of community and I really enjoy that more in SAAS than any other club in Berkeley.
How has SAAS changed throughout your entire time?
As the semesters have gone on, the social side of SAAS has increased so much. One of it could have just been us having a budget to do a lot more things. I think that allowed us to have a lot more social opportunities.
Do you have a personal vision for us moving on even further into the future? What do you hope SAAS would accomplish?
I think, honestly, not to toot SAAS’s horn, but I honestly think this can easily become the 100% best data science club in campus. So just having it be really the premier data science club that everyone will know about is a very realistic goal in the next one or two years, seeing its trajectory.
Do you have advice to newer members for SAAS?
As a newer member, there's obviously a little bit of apprehensiveness coming in and that's what I felt initially as a new member. I think most new members take a little bit of time to warm up. I'll probably just say to any new member, “Put yourself in the deep end, even if you think it's going to be a very unpleasant experience.” It definitely won't. People in SAAS will be willing to always accommodate you and bring you in even if you don't know them. The best way to really make the most out of your SAAS experience is try putting yourself in those situations as much as possible because if you only stick to your required meetings and your required socials, you won't be really getting the full experience.
How do you think SAAS has helped you in terms of your career and professional development?
The advisory office put on a lot of great events and connected us. They created a great connection between leadership and members. Any time I need any sort of professional development help, there’s already a network of SAASies that can just reach out to you and help you.
And now circling back, have you thought of a fun fact?
One fun fact is during quarantine, I was able to get my Rubik's cube time down to 35 seconds. That’s my maximum record.
What emote would you like to be the next in the Jai emote series on Slack?
This is an odd question because I'm not the one creating the Jai emote series. I'll be very interested to see what the next Jai angies one would be because the hyper angies was a very, very strong reaction.