{"id":228669,"date":"2026-06-26T10:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/228669\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T10:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:24:07","slug":"an-upper-darby-student-was-honored-at-the-white-house-for-a-proposal-to-use-ai-to-fight-human-trafficking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/228669\/","title":{"rendered":"An Upper Darby student was honored at the White House for a proposal to use AI to fight human trafficking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n

As a student at Upper Darby<\/a> High School, Khandakar Mahin was intrigued when the school installed a weapons detection system<\/a> two years ago.<\/p>\n

Mahin, who was interested in the artificial intelligence behind the system<\/a>, wrote email newsletters to the student body, describing how it worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had fun doing that,\u201d describing \u201chow AI algorithms were working on a microscopic level,\u201d Mahin said.<\/p>\n

Now an Upper Darby graduate, Mahin, 18, was honored at the White House earlier this month for a proposal he created for another use for AI: to combat human trafficking.<\/p>\n

First lady Melania Trump praised Mahin and the other five winning teams of the inaugural Presidential AI Challenge at a June 9 ceremony.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou saw AI\u2019s potential and created ideas that will shape America\u2019s future in many areas, including healthcare, nutrition, public safety, and beyond,\u201d Trump told the winners, who were chosen from a field of 20,000.<\/p>\n

Mahin \u2014 who said he got to see the Oval Office and \u201cnetwork with many different types of people\u201d \u2014 won for a proposal to use computer vision to match photos from the dark web to a database of 64,000 hotels.<\/p>\n

The tool would identify details like carpet designs or headboard features in photos depicting trafficking, then match them to known hotels, using images scraped from the internet. Mahin created a framework and demonstration of the tool, and said his proposal included ideas for how it could be scaled to be used by law enforcement nationwide.<\/p>\n

The award, which Mahin said came with a $22,500 prize, was yet another achievement for Mahin, who will attend Harvard University this fall; he was also accepted to Yale and Princeton.<\/p>\n

While at Upper Darby High School, he took 16 Advanced Placement classes and won an array of awards and scholarships, including being selected for the Amazon Future Engineers and the Disney Dreamers Academy earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very bright kid who\u2019s been looking into things like this for a long time,\u201d said Dan McGarry, the superintendent of the Upper Darby School District.<\/p>\n

Mahin immigrated to the United States with family from Bangladesh 12 years ago and has attended Upper Darby schools since then.<\/p>\n

Mahin has been \u201cheavily invested in being a contributor in a positive way to his school community,\u201d McGarry said, noting that the recent graduate was involved in setting up local libraries. \u201cIt\u2019s not just artificial intelligence. He\u2019s also a good kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mahin has a particular interest in AI. Mahin, who recently served as a student representative on Upper Darby\u2019s school board, was among a group of students who joined school leaders in meeting with company representatives about the weapons detection system.<\/p>\n

The students made a video about the system, which McGarry said was critical in getting student buy-in.<\/p>\n

The district also sends students to the Delaware County<\/a> Intermediate Unit to share their perspectives; Mahin has addressed other superintendents about AI, \u201cthe good and the bad,\u201d McGarry said.<\/p>\n

At Harvard, Mahin hopes to study political science and government with an aim toward creating \u201cmore ethical AI policies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mahin, who has already participated in programs at Princeton and MIT, credits teachers in Upper Darby \u2014 not just in computer science and math, but English, he said \u2014 with teaching him \u201chow to have the grit to do research.\u201d His award-winning AI project was supervised by Roseann Burns, an Upper Darby teacher who McGarry said works with gifted students.<\/p>\n

Despite being an underfunded district, Upper Darby \u201chas a lot of opportunities,\u201d Mahin said. \u201cAs a student, you really have to seek out the opportunities if you really want it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Mahin may stand out for the level of recognition he has received, McGarry said Upper Darby has many \u201camazingly talented, bright\u201d students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s often overlooked, unfortunately,\u201d McGarry said. He said Mahin \u201crepresents what I think makes this country great. \u2026 Every opportunity that was there, he took it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min As a student at Upper Darby High School, Khandakar Mahin was intrigued when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[147,149,148,150,99060],"class_list":["post-228669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township","tag-upper-darby-student-human-trafficking-ai-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}