Honor Society® member
Ankur Patel
Undergraduate Intern at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- statistics
- Class of 2018
- gaithersburg, Maryland
Member since January 2017
About
Note: There is no GPA for the graduate school in statistics at UNC-CH (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). Classes are graded as L (low pass), P (average pass), and H (high pass). Since the GPA field does not allow me to put N/A I put 4.0 since H is the highest possible grade I can receive and I received an H in both classes I took this semester.
My name is Ankur Patel and I am currently a graduate student at the UNC-CH. My parents immigrated here from India around 30 years ago. I grew up in Gaithersburg, MD where I grew up in an ethnically diverse community and was raised with both Indian and American values.
It was during high school that I decided to pursue statistics. When I was applying for colleges in my senior year, I initially choose finance as my major but I was still not confident that it was something I wanted to pursue. However, in my senior year of high school I was taking AP Statistics and by the second semester, I had decided that this was what I wanted to pursue as a career. I did my undergraduate degree in mathematics (Bachelor of Science) at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) with a concentration in statistics.
Education
-
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
statistics
2016 – 2018
-
University of Maryland at College Park
mathematics
2012 – 2016
Honors and awards
-
magna cum laude
I received this honor when I graduated with my BS in mathematics from UMCP.
Goals and interests
- Career goal
After getting my masters, I would like to start my PhD immediately. I would like to work on my PhD full time but I am open to the possibility of working part time as well. I have not decided what field to do my PhD in but I am currently considering economics, statistical applications to the physical sciences, and biostatistics. After getting my PhD, I would like to teach full time at an accredited 4 year university as an associate professor. Alternatively, I am also considering working full time at a government agency or private firm involved in economics, science, and/or biostatistics or part time at a firm/agency and part time as an associate professor. I am not currently interested in pursuing tenure.
- Graduate school interests
My main interest is in applying statistics to current challenges like clean energy, food production, economic growth, and assisting scientists in their research. I am currently looking for an internship for the summer to help in any of these areas. In addition to learning about statistical methods, I am also expanding my programming skills especially with R.
I am also interested in numerical analysis and linear algebra as both of these fields are needed to optimize statistical algorithms and procedures when dealing with large datasets.- Outside the classroom
In my spare time, I enjoy playing Grand Strategy video games. These video games allow the player to take control of a nation's military, economy, and politics (4 of the games I play are set in historical time periods, 1 of them is a sci-fi themed game) at some point in time and from there, to elevate this nation in territory and global influence.
I also enjoy reading about chemistry and physics through Coursera, Wikipedia, and class materials available online on university websites. In particular, I really enjoy learning about nuclear physics since nuclear power plants are very efficient at producing clean, reliable energy and because the mathematics involved is very challenging. I am still very much a beginner in this area but I would like to learn more and hopefully apply some of my statistical knowledge to this area.
I also enjoy exercising, especially cardio and watching historical documentaries and sci-fi shows.
Experience
-
Undergraduate Intern
NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
May 2016 – Aug 2016
Languages
- English (US) Advanced
