Cameron Kerestus, a computer science major in the College of Science and Technology, says that his experiences at Temple Japan made a lasting-impression. After graduation, he is moving to Arkansas to work in payment processing at Walmart.
Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg
Cameron Kerestus
Degree: Computer science
College: College of Science and Technology
Hometown: Minersville, PA
Next Stop: Payment processing at Walmart
Why I chose Temple: “I studied at Temple Japan during my sophomore and senior years. It was actually a really big deciding factor for me to come to Temple, that we have campuses abroad in Japan and Rome. I’m from a small town in the middle of nowhere. So coming to Temple in Philadelphia was a pretty big change. Going to Tokyo and living there for two semesters was even bigger. Through this experience, I learned that the world is a whole lot bigger than I thought and I’m so grateful for the experience.”
Transformative Temple moment: “I chose to study at Temple because it is a school in the heart of a big city. There are so many opportunities here. Since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to study computer science, and I learned programming at a young age. During my sophomore year at Temple, I did undergraduate research in the Department of Physics with the brilliant Jeff Martoff. He got me involved in a global research project focusing on qubit diagnostics, which was really interesting. For this research, I worked on low-level driver implementation and data visualization. For the project I worked on, I wrote a driver to process an enormous amount of data very quickly and create data visualizations to help other team members make decisions. I was also involved with the Human Computer Interaction lab with Stephen MacNeil.”
What’s next: “I will be moving to Bentonville, Arkansas, to do payment processing for Walmart. During the summer after my junior year, I did an internship with Walmart Global Tech and was placed on the payment processing team. We wrote the code that handles credit card transactions across all Walmart stores globally, which is very extensive. I really enjoyed my internship there and I got a return offer so that will be my next step after graduation.”