NEW YORK: 4 Indian-Origin Middle Schoolers Win Prestigious US Science Competition

NEW YORK:
Four
Indian-origin children are among five winners of a premier science and
engineering competition for middle school students in the US, with a
14-year-old Indian-origin boy taking the top award.

Akilan
Sankaran, 14, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, won the coveted $25,000 Samueli
Foundation Prize, the top award in the Broadcom MASTERS, America’s premier
science and engineering competition for middle school students.

Akilan
Sankaran is the first student with a math project in the competition’s 11-year
history to take home the Samueli Foundation Prize, the organization said in a
statement.

He wrote
a computer program that can calculate “highly divisible numbers,”
sometimes called antiprime numbers, that are over 1,000 digits long.

He
created a new class of functions – the smooth class – to measure a number’s
divisibility, it said, adding that by analysing and developing smooth highly
divisible numbers, his goal was to make calculations run more quickly, in turn
accelerating countless everyday processes and tasks.

The
Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising
Stars), a program of the Society for Science, inspires middle school students
to follow their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
passions through to exciting college and career paths.

30
finalists, including Akilan Sankaran, took home more than $100,000 in award
money.

Camellia
Sharma, 14, Henrico, Virginia, won the USD 10,000 STEM Talent Award for
demonstrating excellence in science, technology, engineering or math, along
with the leadership and technical skills necessary to excel in the 21st Century
STEM workforce and build a better community for tomorrow.

Sharma
built a 3D-printed aerial drone/boat that can fly to a spot, land on the water
and take underwater photos. Her software can then count the fish living there.

Prisha
Shroff, 14, Chandler, Arizona, won the USD 10,000 Lemelson Award for Invention,
awarded by The Lemelson Foundation to a young inventor who creates a promising
solution to a real-world problem.

Shroff
developed an AI-based wildfire prevention system that uses satellite and
meteorological data to identify fire-prone locations and deploy drones there,
the statement said.

Ryka C.
Chopra, 13, Fremont, California, won the USD 10,000 Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation Award for Health Advancement, which recognises the student whose
work and performance shows the most promise in health-related fields and
demonstrates an understanding of the many social factors that affect the health
of communities.

She
geocoded the locations of fast-food restaurants to see if they are built near
populations of obese people, perhaps contributing to the obesity cycle.

Broadcom
MASTERS winners were chosen from the 30 finalists selected from 1,841
applicants from 48 states, Washington, D.C. and three U.S. territories (Puerto
Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands).

 Winners were selected by a panel
of scientists, engineers and educators. Each finalist’s school will receive USD
1,000 from the Broadcom MASTERS program to benefit their STEM initiatives.