Educate the SWAG “Dare to Dream” STEAM Scholarship

Who am I? I am an avid keyboard explorer. Why? I always bring two keyboards with me on vacation- when I'm not playing on it, I'm typing on it. One keyboard represents Art, and the other represents STEM. When I was a baby, I played around with an electric keyboard my grandpa bought for my mom in the 80s. However, my grandparents could not afford piano lessons at the time, so my mom hoped she could afford to bring music to her kids when she grew up. Fortunately, I was able to watch an upright Kawai piano roll up the front door of my house. Before long, I sat down to play on this interesting-looking structure without skipping a day. I was just too intrigued by it. That was close to twelve years ago. Later, casual piano playing turned into performances for friends, senior homes, and strangers, and, later on, performances turned into competitions. One of my most memorable performances was receiving a standing ovation after playing the piano in a duet with a violin artist to hundreds of people on a Princess cruise when I was nine years old. Playing the piano has become so integrated into my life that I would play on a piano whenever there is one. I would be walking in a hotel room one day and then suddenly, the next second, sit down and play the Bach Chromatic Fantasy on the hotel piano. Inspired by classical and pop music styles, I started composing my own pieces on the piano and on the MuseScore software. In addition, I currently run a Youtube channel and an Instagram account to showcase my compositions. I have even published some of my songs on streaming services, such as Spotify and Apple Music. Then, in 8th grade, something new happened in my life. After some contemplation, I decided to sign up for a computer class on web design and Scratch, where I found a new passion: Computer Science. Computer Science was so fun that I stayed extra hours after school every Monday in our computer science club to finish this text-based adventure game I made in 9th grade. I even set a reminder to bring a snack bar every Monday to fuel creative thinking. Later, I started learning more computer science languages, such as HTML, CSS, and Java, and created more websites, games, applications. I even dove into coding competitions, hackathons, and machine learning research projects. In one virtual hackathon, my group, which consisted of sunny California residents ( I was from snowy Michigan), all played an instrument before, decided to develop an interdisciplinary website called MusicSynth. MusicSynth can display different shapes for each musical note/phrase when one inputs a music audio file. In the summer of 10th grade, I attended the Inspirit AI camp to learn artificial intelligence concepts and created a project to use a Convolutional Neural Network model to detect and classify skin conditions and cancers. This model, if paired with a device, can make a preliminary medical diagnosis easier and more efficient. The realization that something as abstract as artificial intelligence can provide real-world solutions to society still stuns me today. The amount of creativity from both music and computer science keeps me intrigued in both areas. Besides learning music and computer science, I love to share these passions with others too. In my high school, I run the Piano Club, Software Engineering Club, and AI4ALL club, where I would teach middle and high schoolers in my local Northville community music, coding, and machine learning skills. I also started the Bytes & Pieces organization that hosts workshops, events, and contests in computer science and music composition, where we currently have 90+ student members around the globe. I hope to help increase diversity and inclusion in both fields and bring our workshops to under-resourced areas. Art and STEM are ways to express innovation and creativity. Ever since I started to compose music a few years ago, I wondered whether a computer can too. Would a computer know how to create a pleasing, beautiful melody? It would be simply amazing to have both human and machine composers side by side, creating impactful songs and influencing our musical culture and music industry together. With artificial intelligence, it becomes possible. AI is an exciting field, as it holds unlimited creativity, solutions, and infinite possibilities. For example, a GAN, a machine learning model, can learn musical structures from large amounts of musical data then combine those learned features to generate its own compositions. The powerful potential of this GAN can be a critical step in creating both generative and creative content that could fundamentally change our viewpoint on the role of machine learning. Next, I wonder if GANs can construct unique connections between music and meaningful pictures. For example, if Rachmaninoff's Etude-Tableau in D minor conjures up images of an adventurous sea journey, can GANs be trained to not only produce similar melodies but also choose the correct images and colors to represent the mood/feelings of parts of this piece, interpreting music even further? Google Magenta is a machine learning library that can create music and connect different types of arts together. This unique insight could be critical for the hearing impaired, as the generated images and colors would facilitate comprehension and provide a more enjoyable melody. I am personally very fascinated with exploring and experimenting with all possibilities of a combination of Computer Science and Art. My love for both keyboards is why I wish to pursue a college education. As I dove deeper into both music and computer science, I realized they are inextricable and that there is so much more to explore in this interdisciplinary field. That is why I believe that I can further improve my experience and understanding in both areas by acquiring a double major in computer science/machine learning and piano performance/composition so I can share projects, creations, and the joy and creativity of both computer science and art with the world.