Anne Christiono: Empowering innovation
Anne Christiono is a dabbler – in addition to being a long-time pianist, she’s a sunrise runner and weekend badminton, soccer, and tennis player. In one area, however, Christiono is in no way casual.
“Right now, machine learning and AI is very big, very up and coming,” Christiono said. “We see it in our everyday school lives, and honestly, looking at everything that’s out there, I still think it’s the tip of the iceberg. The next several decades are going to be decades of exploration in terms of AI and seeing how it can be applied to a lot of different fields, including biology. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how that plays out.”
Christiono, a senior, plans to major in computer science and biology, then go into the medical field. In school, Christiono serves as the president of Mu Alpha Theta, a mathematics-based problem-solving club and honor society – she cites computer science teacher Lubna Lorena as a “near and dear” role model.
“She’s a very active person in computer science, not only as a computer science professional, but also in the education of the future generation of computer scientists,” Christiono said. “I think it’s really inspiring how dedicated she is and how passionate about computer science she is in order to not only have her passion, but also share it with a lot of her students.”
Though the U.S. STEM workforce diversified in the last decade, with increased representation of women and underrepresented minorities, women still make up only 35% of people employed in STEM occupations, despite making up half the total U.S. population. Women also have lower median earnings than men in science and engineering occupations and are underrepresented among degree recipients in STEM fields. In Christiono’s words, women and other underrepresented groups in STEM are a “pool of untapped talent.”
“A lot of girls are not able to achieve that high standing in STEM because they might be facing a lot of disproportionate challenges earlier on,” Christiono said. “So I think if we’re able to empower these women even further and have that gender balance, then we’re able to further contribute to the world of innovation and knowledge sharing.”
Though Christiono said that her gender was a bigger entity in her mind early on, especially as she entered all-male spaces, it started getting easier after overcoming that first hurdle. Even with persisting implicit bias and stigma, Christiono said she now feels comfortable standing her ground with confidence.
“People these days are definitely not like direct; they’re not going to be like, ‘oh, you’re a girl, I don’t think I want you on my team because I don’t think you’re as good as me,’” Christiono said. “But then these days, I can just really pull out the accomplishments, be like, ‘oh, are you sure?’ Because I can do this, this, and this that you might not be as good at. So honestly, I prefer to let my accomplishments speak for myself and carry more weight compared to what they perceive as a weakness.”
