SNIST student Ashwin Kumar Uppala recognized on MLH Top 50 List
Hyderabad: Hyderabad based Ashwin Kumar Uppala, a 21-year-old electronics and computer engineering student at Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology (SNIST), has been named to Major League Hacking’s (MLH) Top 50 list of the organization’s most inspiring community members.
The awardees were chosen for their outstanding contributions to the tech ecosystem and STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
Uppala attended his first hackathon in 2021 and has since participated in over 55 hackathons, winning 11 of them. These experiences aided him in becoming the state’s first Github Campus Expert and a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador.
“My attitude to never give up, despite failures and rejections, and sharing my experiences to help others has made me stand out from others,” he says.
During his high school years, Uppala won interscholastic competitions in software technology, graphic animation, and editing, but it wasn’t until he graduated and attended Harvard’s CS50 that he began to gravitate toward coding.
After hackathons, Uppala found other hacker groups like BlahajGang, EddieHub, HackThisFall, and ElleHacks, that shared his love for technology. “These communities made me instantly interested in getting involved to learn new tech. I would attend Discord meets, resume reviews, public speaking sessions, and mini-games with them, which were a lot of fun and added value to my career,” he says.
To provide similar opportunities in his own community, he started Hack Club Hackerabad— an inclusive, beginner-friendly, student-run developer group. The core team consists of eight SNIST students, with three HackClub Leads representing different genders and ages at the helm. So far, more than 320 students from all over the world have joined its Discord server.
