Carlos Beltran: \u201cTechnology Is My Passion\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nThanks to his famous name, Carlos Beltran has made family restaurant reservations and found he was given the best table, preset with wine, courtesy of the house. But this QC student is a star in his own right, for his talent lies not on the baseball field but in the field of computer science.<\/p>\n
Beltran, along with Team Knight members Charlie Lin, Zifang Huang, and Navidur Rahman, captured first place in the statewide \u201cMaking College Possible Coding Challenge.\u201d Students from SUNY and CUNY colleges had been invited by the governor\u2019s office to develop a mobile app or website to share information about the new Excelsior Scholarship for working and middle-class families. With some colleges sending more than one team, the roster of competitors numbered over 200.<\/p>\n
Each team had to present its concept, along with a working model, at the judging, held March 10, 2017 at Facebook headquarters in Manhattan. Beltran\u2019s family watched the competition in real time through Facebook Live.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first it was a shock to hear we\u2019d won,\u201d says Beltran, recalling how \u201cexciting and emotional\u201d the experience was. \u201cCharlie Lin, the most experienced on the team, led us to victory! \u00a0We weren\u2019t used to public speaking, so we practiced, and that gave us confidence. All our hard work paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their app, called \u201cA Stronger Tomorrow,\u201d is now being refined in the Queens College Tech Incubator. \u201cPresident Matos Rodriguez offered us space there,\u201d says Beltran, who hopes the app will be ready for testing by fall 2018 or early next year. With the help of a growing team of tech-savvy students, the app should be ready in due time for release.<\/p>\n
Beltran has come a long way, arriving with his family from El Salvador when he was 12 years old. Not knowing English, he was placed in an ESL school in Elmont, Long Island, where he grew up. (His father works in construction and his mother is a maid.) Influenced by a relative who manages a law firm, Beltran earned a degree in paralegal studies at Nassau Community College, and up until last June, worked part-time at a law firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019ve always had a passion for technology and enjoyed helping neighbors with their computers,\u201d says Beltran, who decided to pursue a bachelor\u2019s degree in CS. \u201cQueens College was the right choice. I\u2019ve had lots of opportunities here to develop skills to be a developer or engineer. Plus, the tuition was very affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after winning the state competition, Beltran began a summer internship with the web-based business Healthie, Inc., which he acquired through QC\u2019s Tech Talent Pipeline program. He continues to work at the company part time, attending QC two full days and two evenings a week. On Saturdays, he works as an auto technician at Toyota, which trained him and provided him with full-time employment after high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to stay busy,\u201d he says with understatement.<\/p>\n
Naturally, Beltran\u2019s passion for CS dominates. Besides \u201cA Stronger Tomorrow,\u201d Beltran and other QC students created an app at a CUNY Hackathon called Gear Up, which helps users create a natural disaster prevention plan. When he was about to buy a car in 2016, he was inspired to develop an app to assist other would-be purchasers in calculating their monthly car loan payments. His newest project underway with friends is Tutor Connect, which informs students of free help available on campus and connects them with fee-based tutors within a three-mile radius of the college.<\/p>\n
QC is known for its diversity, and Beltran sees this as a great practical advantage. \u201cWorking with people from all backgrounds and experiences helps us develop better apps and products,\u201d he says, noting that all four students on Team Knight were immigrants. \u201cWe brainstormed and put ourselves in others\u2019 shoes to understand their needs and wants.\u201d In the Tech Incubator, Beltran likes to \u201cspread the experience beyond computer science students,\u201d and recently recruited several design students to join a team developing a web-based artist\u2019s portfolio.<\/p>\n
Following his graduation, Beltran hopes to acquire more \u201creal world experience\u201d with a tech giant such as Google or Facebook. \u201cUltimately, though, I see myself involved with my own tech start-up,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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Name: Carlos BeltranMajor: Computer Science Year: Spring 2019 “I\u2019ve always had a passion for technology and enjoyed helping neighbors with their computers”- Carlos Beltran Student Profiles Alumni Profiles Faculty Profiles Staff ProfilesCarlos Beltran: \u201cTechnology Is My Passion\u201d Thanks to his famous name, Carlos Beltran has made family restaurant reservations and found he was given the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"page_category":[],"wf_page_folders":[137],"class_list":["post-789","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2004,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/789\/revisions\/2004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_category?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}