KIRITA-ROSE ESCOTT

Kirita-Rose Escott (Ngāti Kahungunu) | Tāura Te Kura Mātai Pūkaha, Pūrorohiko Te Herenga Waka/Assistant Lecturer in School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington | Te Whanganui-a-Tara

Girls and non-binary youth often find it hard to see a pathway for themselves into a coding career. How did you get into tech/coding? What is one piece of advice you have for them?

I didn’t think of Engineering as a career path in school as I wasn’t particularly strong in math or science. I ended up working for a few years before starting study. I was initially interested in completing a Commerce degree as I find Economics quite interesting. I took a couple papers part-time before deciding on a major and found that I enjoyed coding the most. 

One piece of advice I would give is to follow the path that you enjoy the most, even if you’re not that good at it. I really struggled at the start of my degree, I wasn’t a great coder but it was my favourite part of studying so I continued on and I’m glad I did! Like anything, over time and with a bit of practise, you improve and eventually it becomes second nature to you. If I had given up I wouldn’t have the awesome career I have now!

Tell us about a rad piece of code that you’ve written? What piece of tech/code are you most proud of in your career so far?

Before starting my PhD, I spent some time working in industry at Snapper, where I worked on some pretty awesome projects. One of them being a data visualisation application, which helped us understand the information coming back from the buses.

“If I had given up I wouldn’t
have the awesome career I have now!”

I write some pretty cool code as a part of my PhD thesis. I write experiments that use evolutionary algorithms to generate scheduling heuristics, which are then evaluated in a simulated cloud environment. The overall goal is to design and improve algorithms that optimise dynamic resource allocation in cloud computing.

I’ve recently had two papers accepted and published by conferences. Having your work published is exciting because it means you get to share it with other people in your field that are interested in similar topics!

What big dreams do you have in your job? What are you aspiring to do next?

One dream I have is to eventually open my own research institution, a place where researchers are welcome to pursue their studies as I am now. I hope to encourage and inspire more people who don’t feel like they belong in tech to join. It’s a wonderful industry where you can be creative and solve problems and I believe anyone who has an interest can join!

“I hope to encourage and inspire
more people who don’t feel
like they belong in tech to join.“

My next big step is to finish my PhD and earn my doctorate. It is still a wild thought to me that I will one day be a ‘Dr.’ but for now I am enjoying studying and learning the ropes as an Assistant Lecturer. Teaching is such a rewarding job, there’s nothing better than sharing your knowledge and seeing the students slowly realise they understand what you are sharing with them.

Kirita-Rose codes in: Java, Python, Javascript, C/C++, and C#.