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Seventy-three Indian-American high schoolers are among 300 finalists of the Intel Science Talent Search contest announced Jan. 7. They will now compete with others the nationwide finals to be held in March in Washington, D.C. California had the maximum number of finalists at 24, followed by New York with 12 and Texas with seven.
The annual competition, which this year includes three first-place awards of $150,000 each, is considered the nation’s most prestigious pre-college science competition. From this select pool, 40 finalists are then invited to Washington, DC in March to participate in final judging, display their work to the public, meet with notable scientists, and compete for three top awards of $150,000 each.
Following are the finalists listed according to the state:
Alabama: Viswajit Venkata Macha, 17, of Montgomery Loveless Academic Magnet Program High School in Montgomery (A Novel Bioelectronic Chip for Noninvasive, Versatile Cancer Detection) and Ruchir Rastogi, 17, Loveless Academic Magnet Program High School, Montgomery (Modulation of Macrophage Phenotype Using Nanoparticle-delivered Gene Therapy for Treatment of Inflammatory Diseases).
Arizona: Anvita Gupta, 17, of BASIS Scottsdale (Computational Drug Discovery for Cancer, Tuberculosis, and Ebola by Targeting Intrinsically Disordered Proteins).
California: Tanay Tandon, 18, of Cupertino High School (Topographical Computer Vision Algorithms for Rapid, Low-cost Hematological Diagnostics and Parasite Detection Through Random Forests Classification and Van Leeuwenhoek-type Imaging); Rohan Choudhury, 17, of Monta Vista High School, Danville (Radiative Feedback as a solution to the Cusp-Core and Star Formation Rate Problems); Aunoy Poddar, 18, of Danville Monte Vista High School (Can Yeast be an Effective Model for Chemotherapy?); Rohan Anand Savoor, 18, Fremont Mission San Jose High School (Regulation of Pancreatic Beta Cell Proliferation and Insulin Secretion by Cinacalcet); Vaishavi Shrivastava, 17, Palo Alto Castilleja School (A Noninvasive Regenerative Stem Cell Treatment for Osteoporosis through an Injectable Nanocomposite Orthopedic Implant and Low-Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound Stimulation); Kriti Lall, 17, of Riverside Martin Luther King High School (A Novel Bacteria Strain and Bioreactor for Practical Arsenic Water Bioremediation); Saumya Keremane, 17, of Rolling Hills Estates Palos Verdes Peninsula High School (An Eco-friendly RNA Interference-based Insect Control for Management of Citrus Greening Diseases Using a Model System); Shreya Ramayya, 17, of Sacramento Mira Loma High School (Defeating Malaria by Utilizing Difluoromethyl- and Trifluoromethyl-Artemisinins to Interrupt the Life Cycle of Malaria Parasites); Karthik Raju, 17, of Mira Loma High School (Discovery of a Novel Polypeptide Ligand Targeting a6b4-Expressing Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Cells); Prem Talwai, 17, of San Jose Lynbrook High School (Model Order Reduction of Cell Signaling Pathways: An Investigation of the Invasive Mechanism of Ebola Virus); Somya Khare, 18, of Lynbrook High School, (Changes in Growth Rate and Cytoskeletal Activity During the Starvation Response in E. coli); Nidhi A. Navaratna, 17, of Lynbrook High School (Comparative Whole-Genome Analysis of the Lager Yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus: Investigating Hybrid Origins and Characteristic Genomic Rearrangements); Ruchi Pandya, 18, of The Harker School in San Jose (Development of a Carbon Nanofiber Electrode-based Biosensor for Cardiac Health Diagnostics); Shikhar Dixit, 17, of The Harker School (Immunomodulation by Human Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cell Line ARPE-19); Rohith Kuditipudi, 18, of The Harker School ( Network-based Integration of High Throughput Gene Expression and Methylation Data Reveals New Insights into NAFLD Progression); Neil Movva, 17, of The Harker School (Force Responsive Reconstruction: Characterizing the Morphogenesis of the Periodontal Ligament through Complementary Biomechanical and Histological Study); Pranav Gudipally Reddy, 17, of The Harker School (An Integrative Computational Approach to Decipher Putative Genomic Drivers of Alzheimer’s Disease Susceptibility and Progression); Anokhi Saklecha, 17, of The Harker School (The Utilization of RGD-coated Gold Nanoprisms and Optical Coherence Tomography to Target aVb3 Integrin: A Novel Method to Detect Circulating Tumor Cells); Nikash Shankar, 17, of The Harker School (Encapsulation of Curcumin within Polymeric PLGA-PEG Nanoparticles Protects Neuro2A cells from Beta-Amyloid Induced Cytotoxicity and Improves Bioavailability); Sriram Somasundaram, 17 of The Harker School ( A Novel Design and Evaluation of Chitosan Nanoparticle Ocular Drug Delivery System Using Protein-Ligand Docking Simulations and pH-Dependent Corneal Permeation); Kailas Vodrahalli, 17, of The Harker School (Improving Concentrated Solar Power Technologies: Planar Optical Waveguides for Transporting Concentrated Light to Enable Efficient Energy Conversion); Saranesh Prembabu, 17, of Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon (Coupled Electric and Magnetic Properties in Artificially-Layered Perovskite Thin Films); Neel Bedekar, 17, Saratoga High School (A Novel Approach to True Random Number Generation in Wearable Computing Environments Using MEMS Sensors); and Agastya Gupta, 17, of Saratoga High School (An Inexpensive, Global, and Effective Means of Diagnosing Heart Disease via Computer Vision).
Indiana: Puneeth Naga Sai Krishna Meruva, 17, of Fort Wayne Homestead High School (An Integrated Software Platform for Autonomous Control of Hyper-Redundant Modular Robotic Systems using State Estimation and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping); and Priya Mirmira, 18, of Indianapolis Park-Tudor School (Bisphenol A and Type 2 Diabetes: Genuine Concern or Unnecessary Preoccupation?)
Maryland: Atman Panigrahi, 17, of River Hill High School in Clarksville (Geometry- and Chemistry-Dependent Heat Generation from Al/Mg/Zr Multilayer Foils for Bioagent Defeat); Umesh Janak Padia, 17, of Poolesville High School (The Discovery of a Novel TRH-R1 Agonist: A Drug Candidate for Treating Depression, Parkinson’s Disease, and Hypothyroidism); Matthew D. Das Sarma, 17, of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring (Absorptive Matchings and the Minimum Vertex Cover with Hard Capacities Problem); Sachin Pandey, 17, of Montgomery Blair High School (Optimizing Nearest Neighbor Search Methods Using Volume Overlap); Ishaan Manish Parikh, 17, of Montgomery Blair High School (Metabolic Profiling of the Different Sub-Populations of Melanoma Cells).
Massachusetts: Tejasv Arya, 18, of Andover Phillips Academy (Inhibition of Ubiquitin Like Pathways in Leishmania donovani in vitro Leads to Decreased Macrophage-Parasite Burden ex vivo); Abhinav Sai Venigalla, 17, Phillips Academy in Andover (Rare Events and Hidden Supersymmetry in Systems away from Equilibrium); Kavish Gandhi, 17, of Newton North High School in Newtonville (Minimal Saturated Subgraphs of the Hypercube); and Ayush Kumar, 18, of Worcester Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science (The Cytotoxic Effect of Borrelia burgdorferi: Lyme Disease Research in a Zebrafish Model).
Michigan: Naveen Jasti, 17, of Beverly Hills Detroit Country Day School (An Investigation of the p53 Inhibitor MDM2 in the Invertebrate Species Tribolium castaneum); Aditya Mukundan, 17, International Academy in Bloomfield Hills (Self-Assembled Nanometer Sized Magnetic Sensors and Arrays for Biomagnetic Imaging); Vipul A. Nandigala, 17, of Walled Lake Western High School (Methods of Particle Separation in Micro Fluidic Channels).
Minnesota: Rahul Parhi, 17, of Wayzata High School in Plymouth (Reliable Digital Arithmetic Computing Systems in Presence of Faults).
Nebraska: Pranav Subramaniam, 18, of Omaha Millard North High School (A Diffie-Hellman Style Quantum Protocol Using Commuting Rotation Operations).
New Jersey: Eswar Anandapadmanaban, 17, of Jersey City Dr. Ronald E. McNair Academic High School (The ThereNIM: A Touch-less Respiratory); and Ananya Joshi, 17, Lincroft High Technology High School (Targeting Alzheimer’s Disease by Designing Peptide Inhibitors of b-Amyloid Aggregation).
New York: Ankit Singh Baghel, 18, of The Albany Academies (Proteasome-Directed Degradation of a-Synuclein via Camelid Nanobodies); Farzana Khan, 18, Bronx High School of Science (Genetic Analysis of Toll-like Receptor Signaling in Neurodevelopment); Ariana Gopal, 18, of St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows (Evidence of Association between Subclinical Psychotic Symptoms and Social Cognitive Dysfunction); Monika Dharia, 17, of Garden City Park Mineola High School (Evaluating the Estrogenicity, Androgenicity, and Toxicity of Urban-use Pesticides Using a Saccharomyces cerevisiae Bioluminescent Reporter System); Muhammad Mujtaba Ali, 17, of Latham Shaker High School (The Unique and Disease Protective Mutation A2T changes the Dynamics of Amyloid b: An REMD Simulation and Solution NMR Study); Jay Khurana, 18, of Manlius Fayetteville-Manlius High School (GESPA: A Novel Bioinformatics Tool for Prediction and Early Diagnosis of Genetic Disease); Abhinav Arunabh Talwar, 17, of Herricks High School in New Hyde Park (Evaluating the Capacity to Generate and Preserve Nitric Oxide Bioactivity in Earthworm Erythrocruorin: A Giant Polymeric Hemoglobin with Potential Blood Substitute Properties); Brinda Ramesh, 17, of Ossining High School (Examining the Development of Multisensory Integration in Speech Processing Through the McGurk Illusion); Burhan Azeem, 18, of Staten Island Technical High School (A New Process for the Fabrication of Carbon Microtubes); Ridoy Majumdar, 17, of Syosset High School (A Platform for Brain-Guided Prosthetics: Supervised Machine Learning via Near-infrared Spectroscopy of DL-PFC Hemodynamics); Divji Sharma, 17, of Syosset High School (Differences in Beam Dynamics Between Electric and Magnetic Rings Using High Precision Tracking Simulations); and Pavithran T. Ravindran, 17, of Walter Tresper Clarke High School in Westbury (Formation of Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) Inclusion Compounds with Urea and Thiourea).
North Carolia: Uday Uppal, 17, of North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham (Creating a Hybrid Agent/Grid Model of Contact-Induced Lift).
Ohio: Aswin Bikkani, 18, of Westlake High School (Regulatory Interactions of Lipid Droplet Associating Perilipin Orthologs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae).
Oregon: Anika Raghuvanshi, 17, of Portland Jesuit High School (Logic Synthesis and a Generalized Notation for Memristor-Realized Material Implication Gates).
Pennsylvania: Kevin Biju, 17, of Methacton High School in Eagleville (The Hippo-YAP Pathway: The Attractive Chemotherapeutic Potential of Verteporfin and Thiostrepton to Inhibit Sarcoma Progression).
Texas: Souvik Banerjee, 17, of Colleyville Heritage High School (Design of a Novel in situ Raman Spectroscopy Cell for Lithium Ion Batteries); Niranjan Balachandar, 18, of Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science in Denton (Coevolution Analysis Reveals Evolutionary Divergence of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins); Sunand Iyer, 18, of Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (Boolean Analysis of Mutations Reveals ARHGEF11 in the EGFR Cancer Pathway); Perry Alagappan, 18, of Clear Lake High School in Houston (Novel Renewable Filter for Heavy Metal Removal: A Practical Application of Functionalized Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes); Ria Chhabra, 17, of Plano Senior High School (Food For Thought: A Comparative Study between Organic and Conventional Produce); Ahneesh Jayant Mohanty, 16, of Plano Senior High School (The Use of MnSOD in Combined Modality Therapy to Sensitize Lung Cancer Cells to Chemotherapy and Ionizing Radiation); Raj Munavar Sajjath, 16, of Plano West Senior High School (A Simple Two-Step Method for Molecular Immobilization onto Buckminsterfullerenes).
Virginia: Pooja Chandrashekar, 17, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria (Towards the Rapid Diagnosis of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in a Clinical Setting); and Shreya Nandi, 17, of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (Early Replication in ALT-Utilizing Cells May Induce Tumorigenesis).
Wahsington: Reesab Pathak, 16, of Camas High School (Cytomegalovirus Vaccine Vectors Induce Universal, MHC-E Restricted CD8+ T cells Against AIDS Virus); and Shanta Katipamula, 18, of Richland Hanford High School (Harvesting Hydrogen through the Electrolysis of Water: Investigating the Relationship Between Electro-Catalytic Composition, Electrode Efficiency and Cost Effectiveness).
Wisconsin: Dhaivat Nitin Pandya, 17, of Appleton North High School (Minimum Cost Linear Network Coding Design for General Connections).