In high school, I loved biology and history.
And I went into university thinking I’d study biology or history.
So, I went to a small liberal arts college in
Maine, Colby College, expecting to study biology
or history.
Second semester Freshman year I had a great
computer science teacher, had an amazing experience.
Loved computer science.
Got hooked on it.
And then for summer projects, I stayed at
school and we worked on basically software
engineering for robotics.
That actually took me to South Korea and we
worked at the University there.
So, yeah, it’s been one of kind of many interests
that I’ve had and that I was able to pursue
at the time.
I think it helps, at least with computer science,
my time in college really gave me a way of
thinking.
And it’s you can look at one large complex
problem and how can you break it down, how
can you take something that looks difficult
and impossible and how can you break it into
chunks that you can actually handle.
How do you address each of them?
And how does the whole process fit together?
In many ways, it relates to horses.
You get a new horse in, you try and understand
what you have, what it’s strengths are,
what it’s weaknesses are, how you can support
it, where it has to learn on its own, and
where you can help.
I think being able to look at a big, complex
issue and break it down in small pieces, then
address them and kind of check them off in
a methodical manner has been beneficial throughout
my life.
I think we’ll see a lot of computer sciences
and robotics engineering coming into the horses.
Already they’re developing sensors for shoes
so we can study hoof fall, their timing, and
hopefully the goal would be to detect lameness
early in horses to give riders kind of a heads
up, pre-injury diagnosis.
So, I think we’re going to see a lot of
this kind of integration of technology into
horses in the coming years.
But fortunately, I think the core of the sport
and the basis of riding and horsemanship will
always be there and hopefully we can find
was to better support the horses and the sport.
