Shruti Deekshitula is a graduate student researcher at the Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS) alongside professor Elias Getahun. She is a first-year information science student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Shruti is originally from India and has around three years of experience in the IT industry as a developer/analyst before she started school.
She recently answered some questions about her career, her fieldwork, and her advice for those just starting out in the field.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at ISWS?
My role at Illinois Water Survey majorly revolves around helping professor build models with water data, with programming languages I employ to get insights from the data like Python, R, SQL, and Tableau. I have built databases, time-series forecast models, Tableau Dashboards, etc.
What drew you to your particular area of study?
I am very intrigued with what data can achieve when understood the right way and that is my motivation for my course.
What tools are indispensable to your fieldwork?
Python, R, SQL, Tableau, and most important patience
What question do you get asked most frequently about your career?
The question I get asked a lot is how powerful do you think data is?
What advice would you give to those just getting started in this field?
Understand what you want to study, it is very easy to get overwhelmed and wanting to know all shiny things out there. But first, figure out what you know and what you actually want to know more about. You cannot learn everything at once. I am very fortunate that I have this opportunity, I have learned so much and I learn so much every day, I could not have gotten a better exposure. Thank you ISWS!