Priya Venkatesan — Product Designer

A bit about me!

At 16, I modeled proteins in PyMOL alongside researchers @Vanderbilt. Now I make ideas tangible as a designer.

2023

In highschool, I spent my free hours modeling 3D protein structures alongside researchers @Vanderbilt in PyMOL to understand human genomics, fascinated by the moment something abstract became visible and understandable. Freshman year @UC Berkeley, I pick up a fallen club poster and stumble into Berkeley Innovation, my first introduction to UX design. I quickly realized that design rewarded many of the same instincts I loved in science: asking questions, testing assumptions, and building something tangible.

2024

Sophomore year, I wanted to do more than just design; I wanted to build, test, and iterate with real students. So, I joined Berkeleytime, UC Berkeley’s largest student-run course discovery platform. Between that and tinkering with prototypes in Figma, learning the fundamentals of web development, talking to classmates, and stumbling into my first designathons, design became less about the artifact and more about the people I was building it for.

2025

Junior year, I wanted to understand what happened after my designs left Figma, the code, data, and systems they were actually built on. I dove deep into data structures and machine learning, while bringing that thinking into my work with Alameda County Public Health Department as a technical product manager and becoming a Harvard Women Engineers Who Code Tech Scholar. The more technical I became, the less I saw design and engineering as separate disciplines.

Now

This summer, I found myself moving across strategy, design, and code, rediscovering the joy of building before I had all the answers. I treated making as a way of thinking. Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like I had to choose between being a researcher, designer, or builder. Now, as I enter my senior year, I’m bringing that mindset into leading entrepreneurship @UC Berkeley’s SCET, creating spaces for students to experiment, build, and turn “what if?” into something real.

This summer, I found myself experimenting at EY: moving across strategy, design, and code, rediscovering the joy of building before I had all the answers. As I enter my senior year at UC Berkeley, I've realized I thrive in communities that ask difficult questions, think deeply, move fast, and embrace failure. I’m still chasing that feeling that brought me into a biochemistry lab years ago: asking “what if?” and building that thing to find out.