While a regular at hackathons like MakeUC and MetroHacks, Aziz Abdullaev may surprise people when he tells them he is not a computer science major.  However, Aziz hasn’t always satisfied his passion for creating through programming. When he was in middle school, he spent his time playing guitar and producing music. In his spare time, he simplified and taught physics concepts to an audience of around 3,000 with his Instagram. While he didn’t discover coding until high school, and was unable to major in CS in college, Aziz has worked hard teaching himself the ins and outs of coding, dedicating countless hours of his time to learning everything from Java and Python to web development. Aziz says, “I believe my story shows that there are no limitations on what one can do and achieve.”

Growing up in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, finding the hacker community wasn’t easy initially. Several months after coming to the United States as part of his college program at Duke University, Aziz made a trip to Tennessee to meet some of his friends from high school. They happened to be involved in the organizing team for VandyHacks and encouraged Aziz to apply. Aziz admits he felt impostor syndrome when first applying, but he made friends as soon as he joined the Discord, quickly being invited to a team by another hacker who felt Aziz was a perfect fit. The experience, he says, changed his life. Aziz later competed in MakeUC with the same team to create Recaipe, an app designed to assist people with food allergies and dietary restrictions. Aziz says the project they completed “energized me and sparked my long-dormant passion for creating.”

Aziz believes he has been greatly influenced by the hacker community and says hackathons “have empowered me with the knowledge and helped me to find what is truly my passion.” Through the community, Aziz has grown his skill set as a programmer tremendously. In addition to Recaipe, Aziz has worked on projects to help educators assess student engagement and to help healthcare workers from developing countries predict a patient’s condition. He also developed Crossroadss to help students within Duke University to find others they can collaborate with on projects. He’s already gotten several sign ups and hopes his platform will help dozens of hackers come together and create over the next year.

To Aziz, one of the biggest benefits of hackathons is the ability to collaborate with people from all over the world with completely different skill sets. In his time in the community, Aziz has “had the privilege to create with hackers from India, South Korea, the United States, Canada, and Taiwan,” adding “our differences turned out to be our strengths instead of weakness. We were able to complement each other and built incredible things together.” He has been an excellent role model for his community in Uzbekistan, and he has been inspired to organize his own hackathon to share the opportunity with other students like him. “Because very few students from my school attended…hackathons, I thought they were missing out [on] a lot of opportunities hackathons have to offer in terms of personal growth and career,” Aziz says. Today, Aziz is a testament to the positive experience of hackathons, because, despite not majoring in computer science, he’s already earned two campus jobs in tech and this is only the beginning.