Intro Blog Post
-Surya Appana
My name is Surya Appana, and I am a high school student in my junior year of high school. Some of my hobbies include playing tennis with my friends during my free time and working on computer programming projects using Python. I also spend my free time reading online articles and research papers on various science-related topics, mainly in environmental science. I am studying artificial intelligence because I understand its cutting-edge impact in a variety of real-world applications. Furthermore, I have gathered an interest in exploring and understanding the mathematical concepts and scientific applications related to AI. I would like to add that my aim is to delve deeper into the mathematical and conceptual intuition of AI algorithms and applications while I start working on my own projects.
My AI Scholars experience was quite memorable, and I was fascinated by the AI models and applications that I was introduced to. I particularly enjoyed working with fellow students in a machine learning project guided by an instructor. My group’s instructor was Harry Sha, and I greatly enjoyed working on a facial emotion detection project where we evaluated several machine learning models used to classify facial images based on the emotions they represent.
In my blog, I will be writing about specific applications of machine learning in environmental science and agriculture focusing on sustainability. One area I intend to focus on is precision agriculture, where satellite imagery and remote sensing data can be used to train machine learning and deep learning models in order to improve both the sustainability and efficiency of farming practices. For example, I know that convolutional neural networks can be used to classify the health of crops or identify plant disease using image recognition algorithms.
My target audience with this blog is primarily high school students. However, I hope that anyone who is interested in AI and machine learning may find my blog worthwhile. I would encourage readers to be interested in my blog because I aim to focus on an application of AI that is not widely communicated in order to solve important problems: environmental science. I hope that a growing interest in this field and a greater understanding of how AI can be applied can be beneficial to finding new solutions to problems regarding environmental sustainability. As such, I hope that an interest for my blog can broaden the message that AI and machine learning can make environmental breakthroughs that aren’t widely anticipated.
Building upon this purpose, I hope to use my blog as a method of communicating unpopular yet valuable ways in which AI and machine learning can be used to tackle problems such as climate change and unsustainable environmental and agricultural practices. I want to use this blog to widen the idea of using AI to combat these problems so that future solutions using AI may be encouraged and implemented.
Suryatejas (Surya) Appana is a Student Ambassador in the Inspirit AI Student Ambassadors Program. Inspirit AI is a pre-collegiate enrichment program that exposes curious high school students globally to AI through live online classes. Learn more at https://www.inspiritai.com/.