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By André Walker
ATLANTA — When Merriam Khan (B.S. ’25) first started thinking about college majors, she considered computer science but wasn’t confident it was the right fit for her.
“In high school, I was thinking of going into business,” Khan said. “I’ve always been good at math, and I figured it would be a solid fit.”
But after her parents encouraged her to explore other subjects, one introductory programming course changed everything.
“I initially thought computer science was for super-smart people constantly clacking away at keyboards in labs, and I didn’t see myself that way,” she said. “But when I took that introductory class, it clicked. I actually understood what was going on, and it combined math and science — my two favorite subjects.”
That moment sent Khan in a new direction.
Khan found her academic footing when she joined the Collaborative Human-AI (CHAI) Center, a research hub in Georgia State’s Department of Computer Science. Working with Associate Professor Michael Weeks, she helped design and implement a fire disaster simulation with an AI planning algorithm to research guiding people to safety during emergencies.
“For real life, we’re considering a robot that gets deployed when a fire alarm rings,” she said. “The AI agent guides people outside the building to a safe distance. Humans panic, but AI just thinks. It doesn’t get emotional.”
Khan co-authored a peer-reviewed paper validating the AI agent through fire simulations.
“We placed our agent in a simulated building and timed how long it could last in each room,” she said. “It was a validation study to compare our results with preexisting work.”
Seeing her name in an academic publication for the first time carried a different kind of weight.
“Sometimes I Google it just to make sure it’s real,” she said.
Khan didn’t just thrive in research. She also stepped into the corporate world as a software engineering intern at Delta Air Lines.
“It was a corporate environment, very different from research, with a steep learning curve,” she said. “However, once I caught on, I added new skills to my toolkit.”
At Delta, she sharpened her data analysis skills and wrote automated test scripts to uncover bugs. She also built dashboards using Power BI, a data visualization and reporting platform.
“I found a bug where refreshing the page would overwrite or delete changes,” she said. “That wasn’t supposed to happen, so I flagged it and we fixed it. That felt good.”
Outside the classroom and workplace, Khan gives her time to the places that shaped her.
She volunteers at Arcado Elementary School in Lilburn, Ga. — the elementary school she attended — cataloging books, helping set up book fairs and decorating the walls with student achievements.
“I started volunteering because I needed hours for high school,” she said. “But I kept going because I liked the environment, and it felt good to make things easier for other people.”
In addition to that, she worked with preschoolers at her mosque’s community center, helping 3- and 4-year-olds develop motor skills through activities like coloring and playing with Play-Doh.
“It takes a lot of patience, but it’s fun,” she said.
After graduating this December, Khan plans to pursue a full-time role involving software engineering and machine learning. She wants to gain some work experience before deciding on a concentration for graduate school.
Looking back, Khan says Georgia State helped her discover the path she didn’t know she was searching for.
“I’m walking away with a degree, but also with experiences and opportunities I never would’ve had otherwise,” she said. “The professors, the research center and the internships — they all helped propel my career.”
Photo Credit: Raven Schley