Mathematics and art come together in this I.S. about artificial intelligence

Major: mathematics  Minor: studio art Advisor: Drew Pasteur, associate professor of mathematics I.S. title: “Visualizing Concepts: Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) visuals synthesized from semantic vectors” 

Alayt Issak, a mathematics major with a minor in studio art, wanted to combine her lifelong interest in art with the intrigue that arose around artificial intelligence (AI) after watching a talk given by a research engineer in Machine Learning. “My I.S. asks what it means to understand a concept in a visual format by integrating knowledge or meaning into image generation,” Issak said. With an initial goal to visualize concepts and understand the world, Issak made discoveries in the realm of AI art, and had the opportunity to speak at the Black in AI Workshop, co-located with the NeurIPS Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. Issak credits Wooster for allowing her to network beyond campus and supporting her pursuits regardless of her background. 

To watch videos that Issak made about her progress throughout her I.S. journey click here: Alayt Issak Episode One and Alayt Issak Episode Two. 

Originally published in the summer 2021 issue of Wooster magazine.

Posted in Independent Study on June 21, 2021.