Photo by Grace Yarrow
Shreyas Kompalli
Shreyas Kompalli has committed to UC Berkeley and will be majoring in computer science. Kompalli is interested in robotics and artificial intelligence and wants to create machines that can do human-like actions.
Kompalli is a passionate tennis player, starting at age 6 after being introduced to the sport by his father. Kompalli has played for the varsity tennis team for all four years, taking on the responsibility of team captain this past year. Kompalli also enjoys casually playing basketball, soccer, and ultimate frisbee with his friends to exercise and stay fit.
Kompalli also enjoys volunteering in his free time, particularly in areas of science and teaching others. He has helped the Science Olympiad team — a STEM-based academic decathlon group of elementary school students from students Meadow and Corona Creek elementary school. Kompalli volunteered as a head coach and helped teach kids about science through experiments and coached them during their Science Olympiad finals competition.
Kompalli has also dedicated three summers volunteering at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, presenting exhibits to guests while teaching them the details that go into experiments and the science behind them.
Kompalli spent last summer working on a research project at Sonoma State University; he designed and built an autonomous heat-seeking robot to help with fire detection in order to prevent fires after the devastating 2017 Sonoma County fires.
Kompalli has also been a part of the computer science coding club for four years, joining as a freshman and eventually going from member to vice president to president, running the club and teaching coding lessons, like how to code in the programming language, Python.
Kompalli has also been a member of the Academic Decathlon team for two years and held the responsibility of leading the team as captain during the past year. Kompalli is proud to have represented the school at the Academic Decathlon States competition the past two years.
“Students should pay attention in class because people never pay attention in class and then they mess up — they have to go home and study a lot more than they should. Listen in class and learn as much as you can in class so you don’t have to do as much work at home.”