Matthew Chan

Hi there! I’m Matt.

Q: What made you choose UMD for graduate school? 

I’d initially applied to UMD for the active research in computer graphics and vision being done at the university. But, I ended up enrolling in UMD over other universities for the people. After meeting the current grad students and faculty, I came away feeling both welcomed and supported and got the impression that UMD would be an exciting place to grow intellectually.

Q: Why did you choose computer science as your field of study? 

I actually wasn’t aware that the field of computer science existed until the end of my junior year in undergrad. I’d been interning at a small private investment firm and the CEO had asked me to help him forward 100,000+ emails from his old email address to his new address. I’d (internally) refused to manually forward all of those emails and stumbled upon some intro CS guides while trying to automate the process. I’d always liked logic puzzles and games, so I naturally found computer science fascinating. As I took more courses, my interests grew deeper and deeper, and well…now I’m here.

Q: What are your plans post-graduation? 

After graduating, I plan to stay in academia with the hopes of becoming a professor. I enjoy working with undergrad / grad students would like to continue doing so.

Q: What are your hobbies?

I’m a huge nerd, so I dabble in a little bit of everything and won’t mention it all here. I will say that I’ve taken an interest in freestyle snowboarding over the past 5+ years and Hokkaido is one of my favorite vacation destinations for that reason.

Q: What else should your fellow grad students know about you? 

There’s not much else I want to say other than that I can’t wait to meet new people and make new friends :)