Hi. My name is Gabriel. I鈥檓 13 and I like science, technology, engineering, analyzing art and board/video games. I have been attending 优蜜视频’s program for a few years and had my first summer as a camper last year.

This year I created a science project about trying to fix one of autism鈥檚 most pernicious side effects: spacing out.

As any 2E or autistic and ADD person can tell you, 鈥渟pacing out鈥� cripples their studies and hours and hours are lost and time becomes nebulous until they are aroused by a sound or perhaps a pat on the back. This causes workloads to seemingly multiply like tribbles!

My goal was to fix this problem by using tech 鈥� namely, artificial intelligence (AI) 鈥� that already existed to fix a conundrum that had seemingly been around forever. 鈥淭herefore, spacing out could be fixed by a device to treat and prevent the problem of losing focus in class via artificial intelligence augmented shock therapy from intelligent analysis of electroencephalography,鈥� as I stated in my research paper.

Translated, this means that it is possible to fix this problem by observing the excess static electricity from a gifted and/or autistic brain using a headset and running it through an AI, which attempts to find patterns between the live data and the examples. If it resembles the spaced out datasets, it stimulates the user via either the originally planned method of zapping them on the wrist 鈥� or, the more 鈥渟cience-fair-friendly鈥� method of intense vibration on the wrist.

After spending vast quantities of time researching and contacting many other experts, I attempted to assemble the software and headset from scratch by hacking a toy I own that uses electroencephalography.

First, I attempted to bore the user with pressing the space bar when they see a symbol, but the code was too complex for a Python newbie (or noob). The headset was tricky to solder, and things just did not work out. I have attempted to use many programs, including Github to organize files, Arduino to create the hacked headset, OSCulator to connect systems, Wekinator and WekiInputHelper to run the AI, Python to program with, and many more programs I have spent 200+ hours arranging in every way I can think of to try to get my theoretical system and ambitious dream running. However, I was unable to connect my rig, so I was unable to gather data.

When I started my project, I was notified that my project would not follow school convention, so I could expect to be shamed by the judges. What happened was radically different and a completely unexpected turn of events. After receiving 3rd place at my school, I was unexpectedly entered into the county fair as the only homeschooler, yet received 1st place and entry to state. I am currently preparing to attend the state fair.

Gabe currently volunteers his time to work with youth at his church club, AWANA, and he loves to ski, boogie board, and get completely trounced by waves and ocean. He actively participates in Boy Scouts, has never met a book that he doesn鈥檛 like, loves any and all things put on by 优蜜视频, and loves making animated movies and inventions.

As an intern at the UCLA Department of Biomathematics for the past two summers, I have developed as a researcher, as well as a person, under the mentorship of Dr. Van Savage. Two years ago, when I first started the , I had no idea what biomathematics was. All I knew was that it sounded fun and I was excited to learn more. Dr. Savage shared my same enthusiasm about what I was learning and was extremely involved, sharing papers, presentations, and websites – anything that would help me become a better researcher. He gave me opportunities to work with other talented students and postdoctorates, whom I learned a great deal from.

My first year work involved comparing two versions of vessel extraction software, Angicart and Angicart++, and studying the theory behind scaling properties of blood vessel networks. I ran 3D angiographic image data through software to output blood vessel properties. I also taught myself MATLAB and developed code that I used to study the outputted properties and calculate scaling ratios. Dr. Savage helped me through every step along the way, always available to answer questions, providing me a place to work, and making sure that I was learning and having fun.

I was incredibly excited when Dr. Savage mentioned the prospect of me coming back to work with him this past summer. I had made significant progress over the six weeks I spent working in his lab the summer before, and I was eager to continue where I left off. From my data mining and machine learning classes I took at school that year, I learned the basics of various classification methods such as decisions trees, principal component analysis, and neural networks and implemented the methods in Python. With my knowledge of machine learning tools and GitHub, I wrote a Python notebook for the project that can be shared with others. In my code, I used Python’s logistic regression functions and support vector machine functions in the scikit-learn package to study the differences between animal vasculature and plant vasculature. The functions I wrote clean datasets 聽from the C++ vessel extraction software, then plot and analyze the data with decision boundaries. Dr. Savage and I are now working on a research paper summarizing the results of this project.

I learned from my research experience with Dr. Savage that research requires both perseverance and passion. Often, I would spend hours and hours working on a single function in the data analysis process without even knowing if the analysis was going to prove useful. This year, while working on classifying animal and plant networks, it took weeks to collect the angiographic images, generate a large enough dataset, and clean the data.

Despite how challenging and time-consuming the research was, I learned so much and truly enjoyed it. Dr. Savage helped me fully discover my passion in interdisciplinary computer science and biology research. I improved my coding skills, applied knowledge I gained in class to real data, and learned how to present my findings more effectively. These skills have helped me better communicate my ideas to other people.

Throughout the project, I constantly came up with new ideas and questions that I could ask Dr. Savage, and he further fueled my creativity and drive. Through Dr. Savage鈥檚 mentorship, I became fascinated by the way nature abides to mathematical laws and the predictive power of new computing technologies. I became eager to learn more about the interrelatedness of biology and computer science, and I developed skills that I will be using for the rest of my life.

Would you like to be connected with a professional mentor this summer? Applications are due by April, 16th.

Read Part 2 of the series .

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