Cornelius Vanderbilt Application - 134224558

Aviral Srivastava DOB: 17th October 2003

Page number: 1

“Thanks grandpa! The chocolate pie is yummy.”

It was sophomore year winter break and I was at home, enjoying the vacation
with my grandfather who came to visit us, and working on a project with friends
for a hackathon.
We decided to create a working model based on the Dijkstra’s algorithm, which
identifies the path that best meets a criterion (shortest route, fastest route, etc.)
between two points in a large network. The most normal application being a part
of the GPS on our devices.
So, the idea came, what if we could make a device that could replace sonar for
divers during sea exploration? What if divers could use existing underwater maps
to find passages between the starting point and the target?
Working on our model, late-night Zoom meetings, and fixing errors in the code
were customary. Competition day, the judges gave us advice and praise, after our
presentation. We won the Most Innovative award from a pool of high school and
undergraduate students.
A few months later, I interned at Uable as a Co-creator, where I was able to work
at the intersection of business and programming. While I learned about the fast-
paced management of an enterprise, I contributed to the Dev team’s data
analyzer with my existing knowledge of SQL language.
Just when new possibilities were starting to race through my mind, the
coronavirus pandemic arrived. With almost everything shifted online; I had a lot
of free time on my hands.
What did I do? I enrolled in online courses on Machine Learning and Computer
Vision, the aspects of AI that interested me the most. I took upcoming
hackathons as opportunities to use what I had learnt to build ML projects like the
Coronavirus Detector and the Diabetes Predictor.
Junior year, I attended Intel’s AI Conference where I presented my idea on a
Hand-coordinated Home Security module. As time progressed, my interest in
Cornelius Vanderbilt Application - 134224558
Aviral Srivastava DOB: 17th October 2003
Page number: 2

human-computer interactions deepened. This led me to write an introductory

module titled, “Decoding Computer Vision”, a guide I wished I had, when I started
exploring this field.
This summer, I was accepted into the South-Eastern Finland University’s Game
Development Program. As the program progressed, I learnt a lot about the
intricacies behind simple interfaces and ideation, which I integrated into my Diver
Mapping project.
Sitting in on talks at the AIJ Conference this year, I felt thrilled as I explored the
development process of machines like Honda’s Asimo, a machine that could see,
reason and act.
Through these discrete, yet overlapping interactions, I was amazed by the
process of developing technology to create solutions. Through studying
engineering at Vanderbilt, I hope to turn my interests into tangible solutions of
my own. I specifically want to research in Cognitive Computing, so I can create
smarter biomedical appliances, someday designing a machine that can create
affordable transplantable organs.
Learning about the current technology, I look forward to working with like-minded
peers at Vanderbilt to experience the impact, that our ideas can have on the
society.