Growing up, Vivek Kanpa never wanted to be a computer scientist like his parents. They would try to teach him how programming works by showing him the “Hello, World!” program or Java language.

“And every year I just didn’t understand it. I was like, ‘I am never going to do this,’” Kanpa, 21, told Northeastern Global News.

But he did become interested in solving big human problems at a young age. While visiting his parents’ home country of India for the first time at age 7, Kanpa noticed that some children had to drink water from ditches and puddles, swarmed with flies.

“That really affected me,” he says. “I just didn’t enjoy seeing the inequality for water resources there.”

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Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University