A MAJOR MINOR: WIth a cognitive science major and EECS minor, senior Peter Khooshabeh considers himself a self spun “cognitive engineer.”

EECS minor carves his own academic path with cognitive science major and engineering research

Senior Peter Khooshabeh’s major does not fall into a neat category. He often has trouble illuminating the synergy between his cognitive science major and EECS minor. He has a simple solution.

“I tell people that I am a cognitive engineer. Though it doesn’t exist at Berkeley, this is a real major at other universities,” he explains.

Khooshabeh came to Cal undeclared but quickly chose cognitive science after a freshman seminar on interactive computing with EECS professor James Landay.

“People look at cognitive science as a softer science, but some Berkeley engineering professors do applied cognitive science research,” adds Khooshabeh.

Once he picked a major, he didn’t waste time on pursuing research projects with engineering professors. As a sophomore he worked on DENIM with Professor Landay, a project that looks into the early stages of Web site design, and allows designers to present their ideas by sketching them on a digital tablet.

“DENIM can allow Web designers to show their clients informal functional prototypes to elicit feedback. They can change the site’s structure and links on the spot without doing any programming,” Khooshabeh says.

Not only did research open doors for him, but it helped him with his EECS programming classes.

“The grad students I worked with really helped me with my programming, and that helped me catch up with EECS majors in my classes,” he says.

It was EECS professors like James Landay and Frank Tendick who inspired Khooshabeh to merge cognitive science and computer science and pursue research in human computer interaction.

Khooshabeh says he owes his success to the support and advice he got from his mentors. Now he has become a mentor himself.

For the past several years, he has been helping underrepresented junior high and high school students learn about computer science. This summer he taught a logo programming class at computer camp.

“Mentoring is rewarding because I can give back for all the mentoring I have received,” he adds.

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