Storming their Way to Fame

Two Indians, Aadhar Mittal and Tejeshwar Tandon Sangameshwaran, are plotting

to storm the global IT fraternity. The two students are part of the 12-member

Indian contingent currently in Cleveland, Ohio to participate in the

International Intel Science and Engineering Fair (IISEF). While Mittal is to

present his work on ‘artificial creation of music using music theory’,

Sangameshwaran is looking forward to surprise the world with his advanced word

processor called ‘Text Explorer’.

Mittal is a class twelfth student of New Delhi’s Montfort School.

Sangameshwaran is a class ninth student of Chennai’s SBOA Schools and Junior

Colleges. Mittal’s project aims to generate computerized music using different

techniques and compares the quality of this music with human compositions.

Talking about his project, 17-year old Mittal said, "Creativity is the

least understood aspect of human behavior. Creativity, when applied like human

intelligence, yields results that are of much lower quality."

To demonstrate this, Mittal decided to use music as a creative tool and

compare system-generated music with that composed by humans. First, he learnt

music theory concepts to understand how a piece of music was actually composed.

He then developed programs that could generate music, experimenting at the same

time with different parameters. The results were filtered and analyzed using an

artificial analytic system.

The method used by Mittal is more research based than aimed at designing ‘perfect’

music. He also aims to use his methods to further investigate whether computers

can become music ‘composers’ rather than mere ‘generators’.

Chennai-based 14-year old Sangameshwaran, on the other hand, wanted to solve

problems that the existing systems have failed to address. According to him, the

main objective of his project was to develop a word processor that can be used

by the disabled, is user-friendly, fast, efficient and more secure.

Sangameshwaran, who has been programming since age 11, started off with a

survey to understand the users’ need and according to him, "More than 73%

of people surveyed encouraged me to develop this software," he said. About

21% wanted him to develop similar software for other platforms too. "As

majority of the respondents supported my idea of a better word processor, I

started working on it since August last year," Sangameshwaran said adding

that he displayed ‘Text Explorer Version 1" for the first time at the

local Intel Science Talent Discovery Fair 2003 held at Bangalore in February

this year.

While the program has been developed using Visual Basic, the speech DLLs were

designed using Visual C++ and the whole source code runs across 11,000 pages.

Sangameshwaran also claimed that his Explorer has a multiple document interface

that enables users to open and edit more than 100 documents at a time. The other

features that Text Explorer offers are text to speech facility, voice command,

voice dictation, text fader, special handicapped mode, conversion from decimal

to roman and vice-versa, HTML editor, 5+ advanced encryption and decryption

features, text to picture encryption, MP3 player with lyric support and homework

helper. Sangameshwaran would be showcasing the advanced version at the IISEF.

According to Chanda Mahajan, consultant, Intel’s School Education Program

(West) the 12 participants from India have been selected from amongst the 2,454

direct entry projects at the Synopsis Screening level and have also undergone a

six-day project improvement session organized by Intel in April.

Beginning this year, Intel has also tied up with the Homi Bhabha Center for

Science Education to prepare the participants for the global event. While the

two are yet to finalize the terms of the agreement, this year’s sessions saw

sessions on content enrichment, project presentation skill development and

personality development being conducted by faculty from Homi Bhabha center,

scientists associated with Intel STDF and faculty from eminent academic

institutions in Mumbai.

"The Indian team will be competing with over 1,200 students from over 40

countries and such project improvement session or coaching camps go a long way

in making them familiar with the techniques of research and scientific ways to

improve further and to make their projects conceptually sound and robust,"

said Dr Chitra Natarajan of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at the

Homi Bhaba Center. She added that the improvement program would certainly help

the students improve upon India’s last year performance at IISEF.

Shubhendu Parth



CNS