By Violet Li
Cranbourne West student Sahaya Merin Victor Babu has earned herself a generous scholarship and extra opportunities for personal empowerment with her strong passion for driving positive change through her STEM major.
She has been awarded the 2024 Westpac Young Technologists Scholarship, which amounts to $20,000 in total, including travel expenses for the leadership programs across the state and overseas and three years of financial support for her studies.
She is one of the 35 recipients of the scholarship who are passionate about technology and eager to explore its potential for good.
A Bachelor of Software Engineering student at RMIT, Merin has been interested in improving cybersecurity and developing innovative solutions that make technology more secure and reliable for all users.
“I feel like as much as technology has improved in our world, there are a lot of dangerous risks as well,” she said.
“And I feel like I should at least help support the solutions that save people from becoming problematic with technology.
“I’m hoping to further improve the problems associated with technology with the scholarship.”
Merin is also ardent about advancing her skills and knowledge related to AI.
“Everyone’s been using ChatGPT a lot and in the universities as well. People are relying on it a lot,” she said.
“That’s what I’m interested in AI, like how to minimise the use of ChatGPT for learning because it might affect your studies. You will not understand everything you learn if you keep relying on it.”
When Merin first chose her major, it was more of a decision directed by societal trends.
“When it was time to choose my course, my parents, my sister, and my friends, all suggested that I should do a technology-related degree because tech is like a booming industry in the world right now,” she recalled.
However, as she finally engaged herself with the course and the scholarship, she realised that her major would help a lot of people in society.
“I didn’t have an idea at the start, but then once I entered my degree, I realised how important it was and how much I should contribute to it,” she said.
Merin said she really appreciated the opportunities the scholarship had and would provide.
“There’s a lot of training courses in coding,” she said.
“And there are a lot of leadership programs. I attended a summit in Sydney. They had a lot of talks about reimagining your future, your life, and how you can support society with a technology-related degree.”
