Aisha Ahammed's SURE Experience

Aisha Ahammed is a sophomore undergraduate student majoring in Computer Science with a concentration in Cybersecurity and a minor in Data Analytics. Ahammed chose to pursue a minor in Data Analytics as a result of the research project she completed during the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program in 2023, where she developed a program for generative AI-based music composition. The program Ahammed created was able to learn deep neural networks from existing music and create new music based on those neural networks.

When she began her research, Ahammed was treading on unknown grounds: she had no prior knowledge of machine learning and its many sub-disciplines. How, then, did she end up researching generative AI? The answer is curiosity.

As a Computer Science student, Ahammed liked to wander around the second floor of the Math and Science Building, where most of the Computer Science department is located. She was often fascinated by the research articles professors would pin on the boards outside their offices and would routinely spend her time between classes reading them. Her interest was truly piqued when she came across Dr. Xiang Lian’s work on deep neural networks. Although unfamiliar with the topic, Ahammed thought it seemed like a great skillset to develop. Feeding her curiosity, Ahammed emailed Dr. Lian and asked if he’d be willing to mentor her for SURE, to which he agreed and suggested a research project on Generative AI.

For her project, Ahammed sampled two songs: “Midnight Rain” and “Maroon” by Taylor Swift. She selected the two songs because of their similarities, and without an extensive dataset of samples available, the best result would be produced by similar samples. Ahammed used a few seconds from each song to train the DNN model, and then used various python libraries and tools such as Librosa, TensorFlow, matplotlib, PyTorch, and more to do the same. What was produced was an odd mash-up of both songs, which Ahammed notes didn’t necessarily sound like a good song, but was, in fact, new music!

While she faced many problems during the project, with guidance from her mentor Dr. Lian, Ahammed was able to create a working program that she now proudly puts on her résumé. It as an experience that really showed her what she wanted to do in the future.

Ahammed’s research project showed her what a career in data could look like. As a result, she decided to minor in Data Analytics and pursue further research at the Advanced Telerobotics Laboratory. Ahammed believes that doing research through the SURE program the summer between her freshman and sophomore year created new opportunities for her that have the potential to lead to a fulfilling college career.

Ahammed’s advice to students is to not limit yourself because of things you haven’t learned yet, and to grab any opportunities you come by!