As the school year comes to a close, SJC Brooklyn senior Adnan Hoq has one last task left to check-off his to-do list: write a valedictorian speech.
Hoq is working with the Academic Center for English Language Studies (ACES) department to pen a valedictorian speech that summarizes his four years studying in a foreign country [he calls Dhaka, Bangladesh, home] and properly inspires his classmates transitioning to the next chapter of their lives.
“Words cannot express how honored and elated I feel to have the wonderful privilege of representing my peers, the Class of 2019, at the commencement,” said Hoq, who was accepted into the competitive Microsoft Research Data Science Summer Program. “It still feels so surreal and somewhat overwhelming.
“I am eagerly looking forward to spending one last day with my beloved faculty, staff and peers, celebrating all of our incredible accomplishments in the true tradition of St. Joseph’s College.”
When Hoq came to St. Joseph’s as a freshman, he dove right into the intricacies of mathematics and computer science.
A natural multi-tasker, Hoq maintained a 4.0 grade point average, while taking on a number of impressive internships. He worked as a full-stack developer at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering; as a software and data consultant at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; and as a web developer and instructor for Win2Learn, an organization that offers in-person and online STEM classes with a focus on computer science and robotics.
While at SJC Brooklyn, he also contributed research for “Fitting the Parameters of a Compartmental Model for Breast Cancer” and student recruitment for Blockchain, a company that builds cryptographic ledger systems.
Last summer, Hoq — who is part of SJC Brooklyn’s Honors program — completed an internship as a deep learning researcher in a highly competitive program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The curriculum was so intense that professors jammed eight weeks of material into just three weeks. Most of his peers in the program already had doctorate degrees and patents attached to their names.