Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize: 2024 Winners

The 2024 Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize attracted 67 submissions from undergraduate and graduate students across various majors, including nuclear science and engineering, media arts and sciences, electrical engineering and computer science, mathematics, chemical engineering, and others.
 
The grand prize of $10,000 was awarded to Christopher Maynard SM ’24, a graduate of the Technology and Policy Program in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. Maynard won for “Bioglossia,” a work of speculative fiction about a breakthrough human-to-animal translation technology.
 
The two runners up, awarded $5,000 each, were Siddu Pachipala, an undergraduate majoring in economics and political science, for his essay on generative AI in politics, and Sadie Zacharek, a PhD candidate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, for her conception of a predictive model for mental health precision medicine. In addition, 12 honorable mentions were recognized with each receiving a cash prize of $1,000.
 
Meet the 2024 winners, watch their presentations, and read their essays below.

Grand Prize Winner

Runner Ups

Honorable Mentions

• Dünya Baradari and Aida Baradari, “Open-Source Wearable AI – From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (2044)”
• Ryan Conti, Nicole McGaa, and Alvin Harvey, “Indigenous Language Revitalization Through AI and Community – From Grandma to Ippo’si’“
• Cassie Lee, “PIGs! Playful Interactive Gathering Technology“
• Claire Lu, “Seeing is Believing“
• Andi Qu, “Faster Than the Speed of Thought“
• Shayaan Subzwari and Daud Shad, “Will We Opt In? How Tomorrow’s Computing May Transform Democracy“
• Azfar Sulaiman, “Multimodal Language Learning“
• Sam Tenka, “Algorithmic Democracy“
• Rona Wang, “Colorless“
• Cynthia Zeng, “Climate Resilience with AI-Powered Weather Forecast“
• Jonathan Zheng, “From Atoms to Bytes: Prediction of Molecular Phenomena Enabled by Chemical Data Mining“
• Kayla Zlotnick, “NeuroStim“

---

The Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize competition is co-sponsored by the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC), a cross-cutting initiative within the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
 
Thank you to MAC3 Impact Philanthropies for their generous support of the prize this year.