Natasha Malik is a first year student in the Computer Science graduate program at the University at Albany. She is also enrolled in the business program where she is primarily studying IT Management. Her field of interest is IT consulting and she would like to be involved in providing IT solutions for business processes to organizations after she graduates.

I had heard about CTG from my friends at Graduate School at the University at Albany and my Professors. When I first read through the CTG website, it appeared really interesting and it was evident that there was a lot of interesting stuff happening at CTG. This is what inspired me to apply for the position of a Graduate Assistant here. I started working as a Graduate Assistant in Fall 2006 and the experience has been very enriching this far.

Prior to coming to CTG, I completed my undergraduate studies in India. After receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering, I also worked with Wipro for a year as a part of the technical support team. I also worked with American Express in the Credit and risk analysis team for a year and a half. After this I realized that I needed to specialize rather than have generic knowledge about a couple of fields. Hence, my decision to pursue my graduate studies in the US. As a student, I worked with the NY State Education Department as an intern, developing Web applications for the department.

After I graduate, I intend to return to India to apply the knowledge and experience that I have acquired here. I feel that the global perspective that I have developed will be extremely helpful to me in the future.

I believe that CTG provides an opportunity to learn new things and implement them. For example, the extent to which XML is used in web applications here is fascinating and the concept was completely new to me when I first joined. Now I have begun to understand its positive impact on web management. I think working here will keep me updated on the latest technologies and their implementation which is very beneficial for my field of work.