For a 17-year-old like Prathik Kurella, it can be hard to imagine exactly what your future will look like. The Scotts Valley High School senior has applied to University of California schools, California State University institutions and the University of Washington.
Kurella said his top choices are UC Berkeley or UCSD, in SoCal, but he won’t hear back for a few months. He may not know where he’ll end up next year, but he does know one thing—he loves technology and wants to pursue a career working with state-of-the-art tools.
“I had experience in coding from very young,” said Kurella, noting he was introduced to the tech arts by a group called Code Naturally. “I really thought it was pretty cool how you could create stuff with random symbols.”
In middle school, he began taking programming classes at the library, learning things like Python, HTML and Javascript.
In high school so far, he’s written two research papers on the subject. One, in 11th grade, was about creating a computer algorithm to calculate the area of 2-D shapes. The other, which he finished this past fall, compared the numerical computations of C# and C++ languages.
But, Kurella said, students in Scotts Valley—which houses much of the labor force of Silicon Valley—aren’t getting as much education in this field as those at some other school systems.
“We don’t even have a Computer Science class at my school,” he said, explaining that they do learn basic electrical engineering in Physics, but nothing high-level. “It touches upon it, but it’s not gonna be enough knowledge for you to establish a career in the future.”
He clarified later that there are classes at SVHS like Game Development (where you can learn C# and Unity) and IT Essentials. But, he said, not everyone can take them due to scheduling conflicts.
“I remember one friend who applied for the Game Development class in his junior year but could not take it because it didn’t fit into his schedule,” he said. “I tried taking the IT Essentials class for my senior year but could not because I had English.”
Meanwhile, just over the hill are powerhouse firms like NVIDIA, which have been creating human language-powered AI bots.
So, Kurella took it upon himself to boost knowledge about the tech world with his peers.
“I established the Coding Club in 11th grade,” he said. “Traditional school education does not touch too much on stuff like this.”
Kurella said he began by providing instruction on computer languages, but then decided to shift his approach. Instead of just lecturing, he began assigning mini projects so students could learn to code while actually making something.
“Doing these mini projects would inspire them,” he recalled.
The next step was connecting with area technology businesses. His first big success—with Digital Dynamics—started with a failure.
“I actually applied to their company as an intern,” he said. “But I got rejected.”
Afterward, he received an email saying they’d be willing to come speak about the industry at SVHS.
“I was like, ‘You know what? At least I got something out of the company.’ I’m pretty happy with that,” he remembered thinking.
But then came the hard part—event organization.
“I had to be really persistent,” he said.
In fact, he even had to go to the company’s office on Scotts Valley Drive to make his own presentation.
“It was very nerve-wracking,” he admitted. “Everything turned out fine in the end.”
On a Wednesday in October, the high schoolers gathered in his Physics class during lunch break and into seventh period. He was pleased with how the Digital Dynamics event went, particularly for the sake of his fellow students.
“I just want to introduce them to concepts that will help them in the future,” he said. “I just want to make sure that…the people that I’m with at least have an idea of what they want to do.”
He didn’t have much of a break before it was time to put on the second iteration. It went much more smoothly from his end.
“This time I had more of a backing,” he said, explaining that his vice president had helped with the first one but took on an even greater role in this next event.
The featured attraction was Damian Zabovnik, founder and CEO of Watsonville-based Eivie Corp.
“What made it a good event, first of all, is it allowed me to further develop my knowledge about STEM,” said Kurella, noting this mid-day gathering even involved a demonstration of the drone the start-up is developing. “It was pretty interesting.”
He was intrigued by how the entrepreneur had originally been looking at agricultural uses for the product but eventually decided to pivot into firefighting.
Kurella thanked teacher John Postovit for his help, and noted the students got involved with the Q&A session.
“There was definitely a lot of participation by the students,” he said. “I felt more confident doing my second event.”
He even landed an internship out of it.
Kurella said Zabovnik later reached out to see if he wanted to help the company prepare for an upcoming crowdfunding campaign. That’s how the high school senior ended up taking photos and videos of the inventive hardware—literally getting hands-on experience.
“I helped solder some of the drone’s wires together,” he said. “I also looked at flight data, and all that.”
One day, he even was called down to the Monterey Bay Academy where Eivie was doing some testing. Suddenly, he was in the thick of it. The site is used by various groups pushing the boundaries of the aerospace world.
“It was really cool to see how a lot of people from NASA were there,” Kurella said. “I was able to discuss and talk with them about things…They gave me some advice on what to do in the future regarding my major.”
Read the article about the Digital Dynamics presentation here.
