58th Annual STS (1998–1999)
Finalists
Keith Jonathan Winstein

Keith Jonathan Winstein, 17, of Oak Park, focused on steganography—techniques for embedding information in host data without making any perceptible change to the original material—in developing his computer science project for the Intel Science Talent Search. Although steganographic methods have been developed for concealing data in video, audio and print, none had been found suitable for digital media. In filling that vacuum, Keith created a framework and what he terms a "naïve" algorithm for lexical steganography based on synonym substitutions. He created his own database of approximately 20,000 words organized into changeability sets, and he developed a system to use this data in encoding blocks of text with hidden information in a distributed manner. Any disturbance to underlying prose is minimal. Keith is the son of Dr. Bruce and Joan Winstein and attends the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) in Aurora. He is co-founder of the IMSA Advanced Computing Association, a member of the American Computer Science League, and the Sound F/X, a jazz choir. He plans to study at MIT in preparation for a career in computer science.

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