Awards and Honors

All Science Fair Awards

2010 – Continual Adaptation of Acoustic Models for Domain-Specific Speech Recognition

  • Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)
    • 4th place in Computer Science
    • Acoustical Society of America: 2nd award
  • California State Science Fair
    • 3rd place
  • Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
    • Grand prize: Best Physical Science Project. Sponsored trip to Intel ISEF in San Jose
    • Category 1st place
    • Best Technical Paper in Physical Sciences from Dr. Paul X Callahan Technical Paper Awards
    • Intel Excellence in Computer Science Award
    • United States Army: Honorable Mention

2009 – Semantic Image Retrieval: Learning Gaussian Mixture Models of Semantic Concepts Using Expectation-Maximization

I developed a new approach to image search through understanding image content: classification as image concepts (such as “building,” “trees,” “sky”) by using probabilistic models.

  • Intel Science Talent Search (STS) 2010
    • 2nd place
  • Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)
    • 4th place in Computer Science
    • IEEE Computer Society: 1st award
    • U.S. Army grand prize and all-expense-paid two-week trip to Operation Cherry Blossom in Tokyo, Japan
  • California State Science Fair
    • 3rd place
  • Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
    • Grand prize: Best Physical Science Project. Sponsored trip to Intel ISEF in Reno
    • Category 1st place
    • Honorable mention technical paper
    • Morgan Lewis – 1st place
  • Junior Science and Humanities Symposium 2010
    • Finalist at nationals in Bethesda, Maryland
    • 2nd place at Northern California and Western Nevada Regional: all-expense-paid trip to nationals

2008 – Content-Based Image Retrieval

Developed an algorithm to improve image retrieval accuracy by integrating color and texture features with a machine learning model. Developed a feature visualization tool and framework for image retrieval research.

  • Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)
    • 3rd place in Computer Science
    • Office of Naval Research – scholarship
    • Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence: 2nd place award
  • California State Science Fair
    • 2nd place
  • Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
    • Grand prize: Best Physical Science Project. Sponsored trip to Intel ISEF in Atlanta
    • Category 1st place
    • Honorable mention technical paper
    • Intel Promising Young Scientist Award: COSMOS program scholarship
    • Whitney Education Foundation Award
    • Intel Excellence in Computer Science Award
    • Morgan Lewis Award: Honorable mention
    • IEEE Excellence in Project Presentation
  • Junior Science and Humanities Symposium 2009
    • 3rd place at Northern California and Western Nevada Regional: all-expense-paid trip to nationals in Colorado Springs as student observer

2007 – Acoustic Music Similarity Analysis

“Searching music by similarity.” Explored audio analysis and retrieval algorithms, using techniques from spectral graph theory. Developed a 3D collection visualization for music browsing based on similarity.

  • Intel International Science and Engineering Fair
    • Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence: 1st place award
    • Association for Computing Machinery: Honorable Mention
    • Acoustical Society of America: Honorable Mention
  • California State Science Fair
    • Honorable mention
  • Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
    • Grand prize: Best Physical Science Project. Sponsored trip to Intel ISEF in Albuquerque
    • Category 1st place
    • 1st place technical paper
    • Hitachi Award
    • Morgan Lewis Award: Honorable Mention
    • U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Award

2006 – RFID-Assisted Robot Navigation Algorithm

Developed an algorithm to use data from RFID tags in robot navigation and created a robot simulation with a graphical display.

  • Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
    • Category 2nd place

2005 – Internet-Based Distributed Computing

Investigated load balancing methods for distributed computing. Developed a server to manage a distributed computing network.

  • California State Science Fair
    • 1st place
  • Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
    • Grand prize: Best Physical Science Project. Sponsored trip to California State Science Fair
    • Category 1st place

2004 – JPEG Compression Quality

Developed and ran a study of user acceptance of various degrees of image compression.

  • Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
    • Category 1st place

Lynbrook High School – Red, White, and Blue Award (2008)

Awarded by Mr. George Peck, my AP Computer Science teacher. “David is one of the finest AP Computer Science students I have ever had. Computer Science is ‘his thing.’ … He programs with conciseness and elegance, understanding subtleties that earn him the respect of his classmates for his skill, reasoning abilities, and hard work.”

Future Business Leaders of America

  • Cybersecurity (2009)
    • California State Champion
    • (did not compete at nationals due to scheduling conflict with Research Science Institute at MIT)
  • Internet Application Programming (2008)
    • National 2nd Place, California State Champion
  • Marketing (2008)
    • California 9th place, Bay Section 5th place
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