Indian American school students among Presidential AI award winners

A chatbot to prevent bullying, developed by a group largely comprising Indian-American students, won the first Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge National Champion Awards given away by First Lady Melania Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

A five-member community from Aldie, Virginia, comprising Aarna Jaiswal, Eshani Khatri, Riva Madda, Samhitha Pinnamareddy and Sanuli Rathnayake won the Award in the Elementary School Track 2 category for developing the “Friendzone Chatbot Bullying Prevention App”. A group of students from NorthStar Middle School in Sammamish, Washington, comprising Viha Iyer, Arya Pratap and Shrimayi Shetty, won the Middle School Track 1 category for their project “Skillup”. In the high school division, Khandakar Mahin of Upper Darby Senior High School in Pennsylvania captured the national title in Track 1 for his project, “Utilising Computer Vision for Hotel Room Identification in Criminal Investigations”.

Mahin will graduate from high school this week and attend Harvard University in the autumn.

Among other winners were students from Alcoa Intermediate School from Tennessee who won the award for their project “Homework Helper”. The team comprised Ryker Cochran, Emma Connor, Aaron Gallagher and Ayden Taverna and won the prize in the Elementary Track 1 category. In the Middle School Track 2 category, Shan Vance from Julia Landon College Preparatory School in Jacksonville, Florida, won “Using AI Models to Detect Urban Blight using Street-view Images”.

In the High School Track 2 category, Alexander Du from North Allegheny High School, Sewickley, Pennsylvania, won the award for his project “IRIS: A Low-Cost Spatiotemporal AI Framework for Visually Impaired Navigation in Complex Urban Environments”.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, the First Lady praised the students and described them as America’s future innovators.

“It is wonderful to see this very impressive group of innovators at the White House. I’m proud that you represent the best of America. You are our future,” she said. The Presidential AI Challenge attracted entries from all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Department of Defence schools overseas.

“The first Presidential AI Challenge was broadly welcomed across our nation. More than 20,000 students participated across all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 49 Department of War schools in 10 countries around the world,” Melania Trump said.

The First Lady said the competition was designed to encourage innovation and help young people explore the possibilities of artificial intelligence.