Several Indian American science whiz kids won major awards at the Intel ISEF 2017 competition, The Society for Science and the Public and Intel announced May 19. A slew of Indian American and South Asian high school students took first through fourth award prizes in various categories as well.
Though none of the grand awards — one $75,000 award and two $50,000 prizes — went to Indian Americans, several high school students were recognized with major honors by the society and Intel.
Prathik Naidu, a student at Virginia-based Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, was among the winners of the Dudley R. Herschbach SIYSS Award. Karthik Yegneh, of Methacton High School in Pennsylvania, for “The Homotopy Theory of Parametrized Objects,” took one of the Intel Foundation Cultural and Scientific Visit to China awards. Connecticut-based Greenwich High School student Rahul Subramaniam was among the Indo-U.S.
Science and Technology Visit to India Award winners. Subramaniam was selected for his project, “An Early Warning System for Zika Virus in Mosquito Populations Based on Real-Time Field Detection of Viral RNA in Mosquito Saliva.”
As part of the awards, several categories were given “Best of Category” honors, which netted the winners a $5,000 prize. Subsequent winners of the First, Second, Third and Fourth awards were gifted $3,000, $1,500, $1,000 and $500, respectively.
Naidu, for his project that won him the Dudley R. Herschbach SIYSS Award, was the Best of Category and First Award winner in the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics category.
Yegnesh, for his project that won him the Intel Foundation Cultural and Scientific Visit to China Award, was named Best of Category and First Award in the Mathematics category.
Subramaniam, for his project that won him the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Visit to India Award, was named the Best of Category and First Award winner in Microbiology.