Friday, July 27, 2012

High school student wins Google Science Fair with an artificial neural net to predict breast tumor malignancy

You can view her presentation and information related to the project here. I am thoroughly impressed. Congratulations Brittany on a job well done! You are going to go extremely far!

Now, I have two questions:

  1. How can I recruit her to work with me on my research?  The reality is that Brittany is most likely MIT or CMU bound, though she will be able to choose whatever school she really wants, and will most likely get a full scholarship on top of the awards she has already earned. Awesome.
  2. How do I get in touch with her parents to see what they did with this amazing girl as she was growing up? My son is almost 4 yrs old now. And, right now, he is all about Thomas the Tank Engine! But, the young mind is so malleable, impressionable... they are little sponges! Do I start giving him some Java and Python books now? (Yes, I'm kidding... I'll wait until he is 5 yrs old. :-) Do I get him started with some neat robotics project? Teach him how to code in R? Yet, I want him to enjoy his life as a child. This is more important to me. It goes by so fast! There must be a balance, right? I suspect that the voice of encouragement and support from the parental units are probably the most critical part of any child's success. But, is there something more? Perhaps feeding them more brain food? Keeping them away from the TV? I wonder what steps parents need to take to maximize our chances of raising more Brittanys for this world? What did they do to inspire such motivation and creativity in her mind at such a young age?

    To me, it sounds like this is an opportunity for data mining to answer these questions... if I only had a large repository of data...
Again, congratulations Brittany on a job well done! Awesome job, girl. Your parents must be extremely proud of you.

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