For Hanna Y.’18, scientific curiosity grew first at home—through the hundreds of books on her family’s bookshelves, creative lessons on fractions, debates at the dinner table, and sunset and horizon observations with her father on their balcony.

 

At Spence, this curiosity was encouraged through robotics fairs and advanced math classes, such as multivariable calculus and linear algebra. And Hanna credits Spence with fostering her love of humanities, especially English and the arts. As she chooses which college to attend next year (MIT, Harvard or Stanford), Hanna will be looking for opportunities to marry her two interests of computer science and the arts.

 

“Spence showed me the possibility of combining both interests,” Hanna said. “And Spence gave me so much confidence and encouraged me to speak up—all the things I came here for.”

 

Hanna had an impressive senior year. First, she won a travel grant to go to the International Society for Music Information Retrieval conference in China to present her research and web app to experts in the field, including those from Shazam, Spotify and Pandora. Her project involved machine learning—training a computer to recognize individual musical instruments in an audio file. Her model can recognize 18 instruments, including the banjo, distorted electric guitar and synthesizer.

 

Hanna worked further on this project and entered the New York City Science and Engineering Fair, where she bested 700 other students, winning first place in the computer science category. She also made the top 12 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair finalists and will represent New York City in Pittsburg in May. Hanna will compete for prizes against 1,800 students from 75 countries.