Once May hits, students can be found cramming for AP exams, playing mindless games in empty classrooms or waiting for the last bell of the school year to ring, but not junior Meghna Vikram. She has been preparing to head off to the International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles, California, which kicked off on May 11.
After being selected as an alternate for ISEF at a previous competition, Vikram secured her spot by placing third at the Florida State Science and Engineering Fair in February. Due to both her placement and the results of her peers, Vikram earned a spot at ISEF along with six other Florida students.
“I’m definitely excited to meet basically the youngest and smartest minds of the entire world in one place—it is going to be such a fulfilling experience,” Vikram said.
Vikram’s award-winning research focuses on the issues of hacking and data breaches. She tested the success rate of a learning algorithm, created through computer developer OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4, in catching vulnerabilities within program code. As GPT-4 recently became available to the public through OpenAI’s popular chatbot product, ChatGPT, Vikram saw the importance and timeliness of conducting her research, using artificial intelligence for good.
“I wanted to research this because hacking and data breaches are becoming such a big part of day-to-day life, and there are very few ways to prevent and mitigate the issue as of now,” Vikram said.
In addition to Vikram’s attendance at ISEF, she was invited to BSides Salt Lake City and BSides Knoxville, two prominent cybersecurity conferences held around the globe. Vikram attended the conference in Salt Lake last month to present her research to conference attendees, which included professionals from Adobe, Google, the DBI, Cisco and many more top-tier companies in the field of technology. At the end of May, Vikram will be attending the conference at Knoxville, and she looks forward to presenting her findings once more.
“I was extremely nervous at [BSides Salt Lake City.] There was a lot of pressure and expectations,” Vikram said. “I gained a lot of insight as to how these people all started off as the little guy and the steps they took to become the people they are today.”
Vikram’s success also landed her an invitation to compete at the Lockheed Martin Science Challenge, where she took home first place in the category of Intelligent Machines, Robotics, and Systems Software.
As if Vikram’s schedule was not busy enough, she will also be speaking at ISC2 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada this upcoming October, which is the largest cybersecurity company in the world. After spending almost 10 months conducting her research, the accolades and invites have been well-earned.
