Understanding data structures and algorithms is challenging, and so is finding the right job. That’s why a decade ago, the students at Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley established the Coding Gym, a weekly, drop-in gathering where students strengthen their technical chops and support each other as they navigate the employment process.
A goal of these student-led sessions is to bolster collaborative problem-solving; however, occasionally guest speakers are invited to share industry views. Case in point: Riyaz Rafi Ahmed, a security engineer at NVIDIA and an alumnus from Carnegie Mellon’s Information Networking Institute.
In March, Ahmed led a special guest session, titled “Security Engineering: Career Path + Industry Insights,” which focused on security engineering and the broader landscape of cybersecurity. Ahmed was invited by Aadhil Mubarak Syed, a Coding Gym co-lead along with Ephron Wu. Both students serve as Peer Career Consultants and are pursuing master’s degrees in software engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
When Mubarak Syed was considering CMU-SV for his graduate work, he talked to Ahmed about the program at a student-alumni mixer. “Since we shared a similar cultural and personal background, our friendship grew, and we kept in touch regularly in the following months,” says Mubarak Syed. Thanks to Mubarak Syed’s invitation, Ahmed returned to campus once again to share insights from his own experience in the field. “Students came away with a clearer understanding of security engineering as a broad and multidisciplinary field.”
