Ashwin Kumar Uppala

Ashwin has nurtured a lifelong passion to learn how everything works. As a teenager, he realized the power of computers to transform imaginative ideas into reality. This realization turned into a love for computer science and technology. Ashwin spent his high school years winning interscholastic competitions in software technology, graphic animation, and editing, but it was only when he graduated from high school and attended Harvard’s CS50 that he began gravitating towards coding.

He completed CS50 despite many hurdles and became acquainted with competitive programming. Over the next two years, Ashwin explored computer science, including web development, machine learning, DevOps, and cloud. But, as he says, “it wasn’t until I found communities that I could truly unlock my love for technology.”

During a pandemic lockdown in March 2021, Ashwin happened to be scrolling through LinkedIn when he saw a post about an MLH Local Hack Day, the event that later became MLH Global Hack Week. Seeing that every participant received free stickers, and having a dream to fill his laptop with stickers, Ashwin decided to join in. Even though he was completely new to Discord and Devpost, he created and submitted a very simple program. He realized that being a beginner shouldn’t keep you from trying.

After attending MLH events, Ashwin started getting to know the community and finding ways to be involved. He also found other communities, like BlahajGang, EddieHub, HackThisFall, and ElleHacks, that had similar goals. “The very welcoming community members made me instantly interested in getting involved to learn new tech with the community.” Not only did Ashwin find a supportive community, but he also gained valuable career advice through resume reviews, public speaking sessions, and games. Ashwin says, “in the end, I joined for the swags and stayed for the amazing community.”

He credits the inclusive, beginner-friendly culture of the student-run communities for encouraging him to try new technologies, write tech blogs, host livestreams, and more. “I made amazing friends across the globe who have been a constant support in and out of the community, constantly encouraging me to improve myself.”

Ashwin found himself greatly inspired from his first month of attending hackathons. He soaked up as much as he could and listened to countless talks and podcasts. Ashwin also attended various public speaking sessions during this time and admits to making a lot of mistakes. However, he saw those mistakes as learning opportunities and didn’t give up. In the year that followed, Ashwin participated in over 50 events, won 11 of them, and became a student leader. He says that it was through these events that he networked with others, discovered some of the best tech, and learned best practices for teamwork and delegation.

He was also able to gain acceptance to a variety of student programs that had rejected him the year before. “Initially, I was rejected from every possible student leadership and community program, but that did not stop me from starting a community.” In fact, Ashwin took the feedback from those rejections to help become a better community leader.

Ashwin realized that his own local community was missing guidance, resources, and opportunities, so he decided to be the change. He started a new, inclusive, beginner-friendly student-run developer community called Hack Club Hackerabad. “Hackerabad always approaches with a mindset larger than campus to provide free and quality resources and guidance to all students.” The core team consists of eight SNIST students with three HackClub Leads representing different genders and ages at the helm. “Not everyone knows how to code, but each member has the vision to upskill in the developer community,” says Ashwin. This beginner-friendly, interest-driven community has more than 320 students worldwide joining its Discord server.

Ashwin is currently a third-year student studying Electronics and Computer Engineering at Sreenidhi Institute of Science & Technology: Hyderabad Campus. He has become the first Github Campus Expert in his state as well as a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador. Ashwin continues to help other students generate a passion for technology by hosting speaker series, joining podcasts and Twitch streams, and even organizing a high school hackathon with CodeDay.