
ATLANTA — During the COVID-19 pandemic, when indoor sports were shutting down, Presidential Scholar Abhay Deep Singh got regular exercise through rock climbing in and around his hometown of Pune, India.
“Conquering such a huge natural structure, the sense of accomplishment is presented to me in the form of the breathtaking view,” Singh said. “The journey from the bottom to the top is what pushes me to keep exploring.”
Singh has a similar approach when it comes to working with computers. He enjoys finding ways to create tools that accomplish a particular goal. Starting around the fifth grade, he took classes and attended workshops that helped him learn how to use things such as the open-source electronics platform Arduino to create his own projects.
In eighth grade, he created a remote-controlled solar car, and the following year, he and some friends built a hydraulic arm that could mimic human movement.
Then, he found a problem he could solve right outside his own door.
“My mother has a really nice, small garden on our balcony at home, and she would sometimes forget to water the plants," Singh said. “So, I thought, ‘Why not automate this process?’”
He found parts he could connect to the Arduino that could detect moisture in the soil and used them to create a device that would water the plants when they needed it.
As he was designing projects, he found himself interested in all aspects of computing. He took courses in data science and machine learning. He became particularly interested in learning more about the hardware that makes machines run.
“The CPUs we have in our computers are developing so quickly,” said Singh, who plans to major in computer science. “I realized that I wanted to get into hardware.”
He is considering a future in research, and the ability to participate in undergraduate research was one of the things that drew him to Georgia State.
“Hardware has a lot to do with research and how we can improve the product that we have,” Singh said. “The benefits of the Presidential Scholarship and being able to join the University Assistantship Program were opportunities I would not find in another college.”
To learn more about the Presidential Scholarship, visit honors.gsu.edu/the-presidential-scholarship. Students can now apply to both the Stamps and Presidential scholarships, the university’s premiere academic awards, with one application.