I am Gan Tu and this is a short biography of my story so far

Some people know me as a technical geek, while others know me as a passionate graphic designer. In my view, a beautiful design not only makes your products shine and appear ultra-high quality but also makes it incredibly satisfying to use. Thus, I consider my artistic talents really make me stand out from the classic Silicon Valley techie stereotypes.

When I was small, I didn't know what I wanted to do, like many other kids. In my junior year when I applied for college, I applied to many architecture programs under the career influence of my dad. In fact, 18 out of 20 degrees were in architecture. However, once I got into some prestigious programs with scholarships and even put down a student enrollment deposit, I decided to drop architecture and switch to business and finance because architecture is not really a fitting career for staying and working in the USA.

At the time, I switched to a business and finance degree, thinking I was going to become either a consultant or an investment banker. I would participate in consulting and investment banking competitions. Nevertheless, I am not a person who likes to wait when I have intellectual cravings for learning. I began taking online business specialization programs from schools like Wharton and Harvard Business School. By the time I was a sophomore, I had taken an astonishing 1000+ hours of online courses in various subjects and obtained 13+ specializations. That made the undergraduate business degree boring and redundant for me, so I switched once again to a computer science major.

This time, I fell in love. Different from my childhood experience learning competition-oriented programming classes in China, the schools actually made computer science fun and really enjoyable. Coupled with amazing professors from Stanford and Berkeley, I focused on CS full time and even finished all the graduate classes I wanted to take. What's really cool is I am really good. Yes, I have no shame but am proud in stating that I am really good at programming. In school, I also met some amazingly talented classmates in AI and ML as a part of the leadership team for Machine Learning at Berkeley, and that's where and how I got most of my AI knowledge and experience.

To satisfy my intellectual endeavors, I spent my first college summer in Europe doing an entrepreneurship accelerator program. For my second summer, I attended an art school and learned graphic design, product design, transportation design, and 3D designs. It was three months of intensive drawing. For my last summer, I spent a whole year doing a co-op at Apple working on Siri and AI. Once I was back at school to finish my degree, I also audited various courses in Law School, including but not limited to Contract Law, Constitutional Law, Business Law - Negligence and Torts, and Criminal Law. As you can see, I really like to learn new things.

Besides work, I love traveling. I have solo traveled to all 7 continents, 34 countries and counting. It's my goal to travel to a different country each year, and I am gratful for having the time and means to make those memories. I am also a recreational scuba diver, working on my pilot's license, and trying to get better at both skiing and snowboarding. Oh, I am also an amateur magician 🎩 .