Week 23: Research & MIT Applications

Weekly Report #23 Week 23: (2/16/2026-2/23/2026)

Like the last couple of previous weeks, this was another week that was spent mostly dedicated to academics, focusing on AP Language, AP Calculus BC, and AP Physics C: E&M. I ensured that I stay on top of my responsibilities for school and preparing for my upcoming classes to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. This week wasn’t dedicated to robotics, since we have a bit of time before our next competition (UIL states), which is on March 20th. Until then, we are mostly focusing on improving our outreach and also spending time making the tri-fold. This would allow us to showcase the team’s engineering process - something vital, especially when the judges come for pit judging, along with helping us describe the design journey and our community outreach to the judges. Additionally, I made some significant progress on my summer program applications - mostly working on the essay parts of the application, personal statements, and online prerequisites required, and ensuring that I have all aspects done before the deadline. One particular application that I spent my time on was the MIT Beaver Works training, diving into the fundamentals of radio waves, since I am keen to do Unmanned Air System-Synthetic Aperture Radar. This program would be an extremely exciting step for the world of signals and radar imaging systems. With the early sessions helping ensure that there is a strong foundation for advanced work to come, if I do get selected. Finally, I also spent Friday of last week playing tennis, which was a great experience and a time to clear my mind and recharge for the coming week ahead. I’ve attached a video via a Drive link of a tennis rally. Please feel free to look at it.

For ISM, I spent the last week mostly researching and diving deeper into machine learning models, along with making significant progress on building a predictive model - working through the early stages and the methodology. Alongside that, I also spent some time identifying potential journals in which I can publish my research paper, which analyzes photodynamic therapy through three key questions, landing upon the Journal of High School Science as the journal in which I am going to submit my manuscript. I added more parts to my research paper - and made it more sophisticated than just analyzing it through the questions and backing it up with data. Along with that, I also fixed my third question since I felt that it was one place that necessitated improvement. Publishing would be an important step towards getting my work recognized and shared with a broader audience of researchers.

Closing this chapter, opening the next.