Here are just some of the student projects our mentors supervised this year:

•     Shreerith S: developed an intra-day trading algorithm which employs a combination of statistical metrics and supervised machine learning routines to predict the average price of a stock. Shreerith  was looking at a major/minor combination of computer science and finance and had a keen interest in pursuing a career in the latter. Given that investment banking firms are devoting more and more resources to their quantitative/algorithmic trading divisions, this project helped the student get an early and in-depth exposure to modern finance. It also helped the student distinguish himself as a CS/Finance major and demonstrated his capability and insight into both fields. Since investment banking firms and hedge funds spent months and years trying to find a successful algorithm/model to predict the behaviour of the stock price, it is no small feat for a high-school student to have made such an algorithm. Additionally, the student got to learn the fundamental concepts of statistics and machine learning and got to apply them as well in the process of doing this project. Besides the valuable learning experience of doing this project, the student was also able to document his analysis of the relationship of the stock price with different metrics and has a paper ready for publication.

•    Ishnoor S: created a home automation startup that makes low cost wifi enables smart switches for which he gathered money through crowdfunding.

•    Tanushree P: Created a psychology project looking at the different attitudes of classical Indian dance through male and female students in India. Tanushree has learned to design and conduct a survey study in order to answer an important cultural question using a psychological approach.

•    Deb B: built drone that can automatically irrigate a farmer's field, using infrared sensors to detect crop health.

•    Neel B: worked on a drone irrigation project which led to an internship with GE Aerospace working on jet engines

•    Rishabh C: Conducted a comprehensive economics project and wrote a paper focused on the export/import regulation passed in cotton and the economic effect it had on national and market-level cotton prices by looking at historical price data

•    Dhruv N: Conducted a sociological study on how the perception of wealth affects an individual’s judgements. The project has collected data from 5,200 participants and will be publishing their work in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Dhruv learnt how to conduct a rigorous psychological experiment, incorporating many of the field's newest recommendations. More generally, he has learnt how to think of an abstract question and then understand how that question can be transformed into a hypothesis with concrete test implications. 

•    Tanmay G: Submitting an essay to The Concorde Review (international history journal). The essay traces the history of military coups in Pakistan, where military coups have occurred often and have interfered with the country's path to democratic function. Tanmay has gained experience in reading research literature in a hypothesis-driven manner, evaluating published material, and constructing a lengthy, thesis-based essay.

•    Aaliya L: To increase family and social-group awareness of the signs of eating disorders such as anorexia in teens. Often, parents do not know what the warning signs are, and their approaches may actually end up alienating the child. Aaliya learnt how to put together a large important information of both medical and social relevance into a concise, readable framework appropriate for a large audience.