Following a qualification process involving essays, awards, test scores, STEM courses, and one local interview, eleventh-grader Uday Goyat was recognized as a Sunshine State STEM Scholar this past month. Goyat is one of two Sarasota County students to be recognized with the award.
Alongside his work in advanced STEM classes at Pine View, Goyat was recognized for his membership in the world champion Pine View Moody’s Mathworks Challenge Team and for his research assistantship in computational linguistics at New College of Florida, a project still in progress.
Goyat, Dr. Fahmida Hamid (an assistant professor of computer science at New College), and one other student are working to create an algorithm for summarizations of social studies and world history textbooks. Inspired by his own experiences in Pine View AP history classrooms, Goyat said he hoped this work would be beneficial to students later on.
“Usually we read a research paper that we’re trying to implement and usually the people who did the research… don’t provide us with the code, so we try to implement it ourselves and we fail ten, 20 times before we get something working,” Goyat said. “It’s a lot of fun. Just trying different things, and it’s funny when we fail. It’s just a very good bonding experience.”
Principal Dr. Stephen Covert presented Goyat to the Sarasota County School Board Jan. 20, highlighting his unique accomplishments.
“[He] is one of those students who, when you review their academic profile, you are simply amazed, and when you couple that with their volunteer work, their passions outside of school, and their hobbies, you gain insight into the truly remarkable nature of a young gifted mind,” Covert said.
In addition to his computer linguistics project, Goyat is currently involved in a second research project at New College on polyphonic pitch detection, an advanced computer function that allows complex audio files to be transcribed as sheet music.
“For example, Western music usually has music sheets, but a lot of folk music in the east and south India don’t have that,” Goyat said. “It’s all oral, so a way to preserve that can be really helpful.”
In April, he will participate in a networking STEM summit in Orlando, where he will share his work in the STEM field with 103 fellow award recipients and participate in a “think tank” on what the Florida Department of Education terms, “tough Florida challenges.”
“I have a whole list of these projects—I have 20, 30 projects which are similar to these and can probably help people, and have not been already done….my goal is to finish all of them before I graduate from college,” Goyat said. “Let’s see how it goes.”
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 19, 2020, Features pullout of the Torch with the headline: Uday Goyat recognized as Sunshine State STEM Scholar.
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