A 16-year-old student from Assam, Huma Abia Kanta, showcased her research at an international conference on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The event took place in a hybrid format at Nakhchivan State University, Azerbaijan, and was organized by Azerbaijan Technical University alongside several partner universities. Huma, a Grade XII student at Royal Global School in Guwahati, presented her paper titled ‘ML-Based Prediction of Phycocyanin Purity,’ which examines the use of machine-learning models to predict pigment purity levels crucial for sustainable bio-resource industries. Her model, using six different regressors, achieved a mean absolute error significantly lower than the standard lab deviation.
Huma is among the youngest Indians to present at such a forum, and her paper will be published in international journals indexed in Scopus. She has also authored another paper on Sanskrit phonology, accepted for presentation at an upcoming conference on Natural Language Processing. Additionally, she has co-authored three more papers currently under review. Founder of the educational startup ‘desicodes,’ Huma aims to democratize computer science learning in Northeast India with an Assamese-Python transpiler. She has also contributed to ecological projects, such as digitizing motifs for handloom saris to aid conservation efforts for the Greater Adjutant Stork.
Huma credits her mentor, Dr Ankur Pan Saikia, and Dr Arup Kr. Mukhopadhyay, Director of Royal Global School, for their support in achieving this milestone.
