Fellow:Ray Sidener

Biography

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Ray Sidener is a University Innovation fellow and an Honors double major in Mathematics and Computer Science at Swarthmore College (class of 2021). Originally from Philadelphia, he is passionate about finding the intersections between technology and work for social good. He hopes to change the way people develop technology for profit, not for people. Ray was first introduced to I&E by a class on social innovation and entrepreneurship, followed by the 2019 CIL@SF trip focused on the same theme.

Outside of UIF, Ray is a board member for the Swarthmore Queer Union and a member of the LGBTQ+ Student Advisory Board. In the Summer of 2019, Ray was one of 28 students selected from over 1,000 applicants to participate in Twitter’s #TechProud, a two-day interactive program for LGBTQ+ Computer Science students. Ray has worked also as a tutor both on and off campus for different levels of math and is a student member of the Mathematical Association of America.

Ray spent his semester of UIF training abroad at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, exploring the city and learning about the different culture. Although this made some of the coursework more difficult, it also allowed him to be inspired by the culture of innovation at the University of Glasgow and to see how it differed from that of Swarthmore. He is excited to take all of these learnings home and apply them to make a change at his own university.