Mikul Saravanan

Mikul Saravanan, from Rochester Hills, Michigan, completed his high school education at Cranbrook Kingswood Schools in Bloomfield Hills. During high school, Mikul was a multi-sport athlete, participating in soccer, track and swimming. He also led various academic and extracurricular clubs, including Science Olympiad, Research, Drone and Robotics clubs as President or Co-President. In addition to these pursuits, he contributed to the team's VEX robot, where they continue to perform at a high level.

Mikul is working toward a degree in Computer Science with a minor in Economics at Columbia University. His initial venture into academic research began when he joined Professor Khalid Malik's SMILES research lab, where he specialized in deep learning techniques. His primary research focused on detecting and countering adversarial attacks against automatic speaker verification systems. He also successfully integrated federated learning into these systems, enabling their use in lightweight mobile devices and smart speakers. This work has led to a couple publications, including a paper in the Artificial Intelligence Review.

In parallel to his academic work, Mikul began working on a passion project aimed at using robots for air purification at the start of his sophomore year. Partly due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Mikul designed and prototyped a robot engineered to enhance room air quality through superior purification, humidification, and disinfection capabilities compared to conventional devices. This innovative robot autonomously navigates rooms, delivering clean air and removing viruses and bacteria.

During his junior year, he advanced his robot further, revamping its design for improved aesthetics and equipping it with LiDAR and a tracking camera to enhance its autonomous navigation capabilities. Moreover, Mikul integrated a camera and microphone, utilizing AI for the detection of individuals, falls, and audio anomalies such as glass breaking, baby crying, or smoke alarms. In addition to the research being published, this novel design is currently pending patent approval.

In the realm of community service, Mikul co-founded the non-profit Puzzler Foundation alongside his brother. The foundation aims to empower underprivileged children by providing STEM education. As part of his outreach efforts, Mikul has donated custom robot kits to an orphanage in India and initiated educational programs focused on STEM subjects.

Outside of his academic and extracurricular commitments, Mikul enjoys spending his free time with friends, going to the gym, traveling, and listening to music. He loves to try different foods, and even has a fascination for EVs. He has a particular affinity for the great outdoors, which he prefers over staying confined to indoor spaces. At Columbia, he hopes to further his passion for research and make a difference in the community.