Hello eveyone! I’m Umang Sardesai and currently doing my Masters in Computer Science at University of California, Santa Cruz. I received my undergraduate degree from D.J. Sanghvi College of Engineering (University of Mumbai) in Computers as well.

I have been in love with Computers right since childhood. I come from a background where my dad and few other close relatives are doctors. Although I was never pressured into (my parents have always been supportive in whichever field I pursue), everyone naturally thought I would take up medicine.

How much ever cliched as it might sound, we had got a brand new Computer lab back in 9th grade in school. Seeing all those new monitors and writing my very first “Hello World” program on Turbo C++, I knew this is what I want to do. CODE!. Since then, I was sure that I would take up Computers in the future. There was even an instance for my English paper where I had just one minute remaining and I had an whole essay to complete on “My ambition in Life”. I ended up writing just one line - “I want to be an Computer Engineer”.

My undergraduate degree in Computer Science laid a perfect foundation for graduate studies. I developed special affinity for Database Management Systems and Data Mining. As my final year project, I worked on a Review Mining system that extracted reviews from Flipkart (e-commerce website), analyzed them sentence by sentence and summarized the sentiment expressed in these reviews. Our team even authored a paper which was published by IJRTE in their May 2014 Journal.

Prior to my Masters, I worked for 2 years at BrowserStack as a Product Specialist for Selenium. I designed and built a suite of scripts and utilities that helped users get on-board with BrowserStack. My role also gave me the opportunity to interact with clients from Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, McKesson etc. and creators of famous open source projects such as jQuery. My experience not only enhanced my programming skills but also exposed me to the dynamics of the corporate work culture.

With the relevant academic background and professional experience, it was an opportune moment for me to apply for a Masters in Computer Science. I have started to develop interests in Distributed Systems, Big Data and Data Engineering in general and have already implemented few projects in the past six months. I look forward to working on more such projects. Along with that, I also try to upskill myself with the latest technology stacks that are required from a full-stack developer today.

My goal is to learn something new everyday. Awaiting challenges that lie ahead!

Well… that was enough professional and academic information, here are some (fun) facts on the personal front:

  • I was born and bought up in Mumbai. Always be a Mumbaikar at heart
  • I hail from Goa 🌴. Can speak fluently in English, Hindi, Marathi and Konkani
  • I’m a mixture of introvert and extrovert (tending more towards extrovert). Love talking and getting to know more about people around me
  • Sports Afficionado. Cricket 🏏 is primary love, then football (No! Not American football football, soccer football ⚽). Miss reading the sports page of our daily newspaper back in India
  • I love gaming and would shamelessly call myself a born Gamer 🎮. Known to break high-scores on friends’ smartphones, right from Temple Run to Subway Surfers
  • On Desktop, Counter Strike, Age of Empires and FIFA are my favourite, in that order. Planning on purchasing a PS4/XBox soon
  • Techie guy and was an editor and writer at AndroidNova.org (P.S: The website is no longer online )
  • Takes the initiative to make plans. May it be a movie or going to a nearby cafe/restaurant
  • Can listen to any type of music. Like EDM though. Also, love to Dance 🕺
  • Dog person 🐶 but might get myself a Guinea Pig one day. Love animals in general
  • I happen to spend half of my time reading 9GAG posts and the comments on it. Sometimes hate myself for that

About this website

This website is made using Github pages and Jekyll. Special thanks to Dean Attali for his minimal Beautiful Jekyll theme.