Our Team
Michael Wu, Co-founder
Michael Wu is the co-founder and director of the North American Chapter of Brightspark. Over the years, Michael has overseen the Spark program to land many of our elite students in schools such as Cornell, Berkeley, Brown, University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and Harvard. Michael is dedicated to student growth in all aspects of life, beyond academics and the Spark admissions incubator. He has placed students directly into internships at Goldman, NXT, W3R Digital, Amazon, JP Morgan, and maintains a track record of high admit rates working with a select group of Brightspark students.
Windy Zhu, Natural Sciences Spark Mentor
As a machine learning scientist with a background in cognitive science and biochemistry, I bring an interdisciplinary approach to mentoring young researchers in computational cognitive science and data science. I encourage students to think creatively across fields, exploring the intersection of machine learning, cognition, and real-world data. My hands-on mentorship style focuses on building analytical and problem-solving skills through data-driven projects that highlight both technical and human-centered insights.
Kostas Bekris, Computer Science Spark Mentor
Kostas Bekris is a Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University and an Amazon Scholar with Amazon Robotics. His research focuses on algorithmic robotics, developing planning and learning algorithms for manipulation, dynamic systems, and adaptive mechanisms in real-world applications like logistics and field robotics. He has chaired top robotics conferences (RSS, WAFR) and received support from NASA, NSF, DHS, and DoD, including a NASA Early Career Faculty award.
List of publications: https://pracsys.cs.rutgers.edu/papers/
Sanjiv Das, Finance Spark Mentor
Sanjiv Das is the Terry Professor of Finance and Data Science at Santa Clara University, with prior faculty roles at Harvard and UC Berkeley. He holds advanced degrees in finance and computer science, along with an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. A former VP at Citibank in Asia-Pacific, he now researches AI, machine learning, FinTech, portfolio theory, and financial networks. He is a founding editor of The Journal of Investment Management and serves on multiple editorial boards.