Intel Science Talent Search Finalists
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Indian juniors are 'Inside Intel'
WASHINGTON: As is now the pattern, the usual clutch of students of
Indian-origin have made the final cut for the Intel Science Talent
Search, an annual event whose top finds are said to be progress towards
the Nobel Prize and other high honours later in life.
There are five teenagers of Indian-origin among the 40 finalists
announced this weekend, leading to expectation that one of them may
finally win the title sometimes called the "Junior Nobel Prize."
Children of Indian immigrants have consistently figured among the Top
Ten in the last five years, including a third place last year (Ryna
Karnik of Oregon).
The Top Ten, including the winner and runners-up, will be named at a
black-tie dinner in Washington DC on March 15 after further evaluation.
The winner is awarded a $ 100,000 scholarship and other prizes.
According to Intel, alumni of science talent search program hold more
than 100 of the world's most coveted science and math honours,
including six Nobel Prizes, three National Medals of Science, 10
MacArthur Foundation Fellowships and two Fields Medals.
This year's Indian-American finalists include Pooja Jotwani, 17 of
Florida (for her research into quark matters and cooling neutron
stars); Abhi Gulati, 18, of Illinois ( for his work involving algebra
and combinatorics); Samuel Mohun Bhagwat, 16, of Michigan (for his work
aimed at classifying determinantal sequences); Neal Wadhwa, 18, of New
York (for his study on the relationship between topology and geometry);
and, Sagar Mehta, 17, of New York (for his work on wound healing and
tissue engineering).
The five came through from among 300 semifinalists, about 40 of whom
are of Indian origin. The Final 40 also included at least ten other
Asians of Chinese and other far eastern country origins, attesting to
the growing presence and impressive performance of immigrant children
in the American school system.
"These finalists reflect the best accomplishments of solid,
project-based, curiosity-driven education," Intel CEO Craig Barrett,
said after the selection of the finalists. "These young people are just
beginning their scientific journeys. Like many STS finalists before
them, this group will be responsible for future discoveries that
address critical needs while helping to keep America at the centre of
innovation."
The remarkable performance of these young immigrant children is one
reason why many US corporations and scientific institutions are
desperate to keep the immigration channels open.
According to Intel, 25 per cent of this year's finalists have perfect
SAT scores, 47 percent are fluent in a language other than English, and
80 percent play a musical instrument.
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FLORIDA
Pooja Sunil Jotwani , 17, of Pembroke Pines, researched the effects of
a quark matter core on neutron star cooling for her Intel Science
Talent Search in physics.
Her observations of cooling neutron stars, as well as their physical
properties such as neutrino emission processes and the heat quantities
of the interior and exterior, provide information about the states of
matter at supernuclear densities.
She describes how cooling curves allow theoretical physicists to better
predict the stars' internal composition. When cooling curves are
combined with the recently discovered Gapless Color-Flavor Locked
(gCFL) quark matter, the surprising results show old stars with gCFL
cores cooling more slowly than nuclear matter stars. The discovery of
gCFL has motivated astronomers to search for quark matter in aged
neutron stars, a category that is seldom studied.
A student of Charles W. Flanagan High School, Pooja is active in both
the math club and debate team. The daughter of Sunil and Kiran Jotwani,
she was born in India and is head of the youth group in the Sindhi
Association of South Florida. Pooja plans to attend MIT where she can
pursue a career in astrophysics.
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ILLINOIS
Abhi Gulati , 18, of Bloomington submitted a mathematics project in the
Intel Science Talent Search that involves algebra and combinatorics,
and extends his earlier work on the SET card game.
In SET, three cards are a set if they are all the same, or all
different, with regard to certain attributes. This translates in the
setting of groups to a condition of the form x1 + x2 + x3 = 0 where the
x's come from copies of the cyclic group of order 3.
Abhi develops a general version of this condition in the language of
groups and hypergraphs. A hypergraph is like a graph, but the sets of
vertices with a common edge are replaced by k-element sets of vertices
for some fixed k >= 2. Abhi applies combinatorial results to prove that
certain colourings of a hypergraph on a finite abelian group can have
no monochromatic edges. Abhi is a violinist and student council member
at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora and has
perfect SAT scores. Born in India, he is the son of Rakesh and Radha
Gulati.
He hopes to attend Harvard and go on to receive his graduate degree in
mathematics. Abhi plans to become a professor, so that he can continue
his research while teaching.
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MICHIGAN
Samuel Mohun Bhagwat , 16, of Livonia aims at classifying determinantal
sequences for his Intel Science Talent Search mathematics project.
A determinantal sequence is a sequence an of nonzero integers, one for
each integer n, where the determinant anan+3 - an+1an+2 takes on the
same fixed nonzero value d for all choices of n. All such sequences
have two useful invariants, ALPHA = (a0 + a2)/a1 = (a2 + a4)/a3 = ...
and BETA = (a1 + a3)/a2 = (a3 + a5)/a4 = ... The sequence is reduced if
no prime integer divides all the odd-indexed entries, and no prime
integer divides all the even-indexed entries; the reduced sequences are
the basic building blocks for all others. For reduced sequences, ALPHA
and BETA are integers, and Sam classifies the reduced cases when 0 <=
ALPHABETA <= 4. For ALPHA and BETA outside this range, he shows there
are only finitely many reduced sequences for each choice of d.
The son of Dr. Ashok Bhagwat and Helen Gay, Sam studied guitar and his
father's native language, Marathi, the last two summers in India. At
Winston Churchill High School he is captain of the varsity Quiz Bowl
team, and his awards include a Grand Award at the Science and
Engineering Fair of Metro Detroit. Sam plans to attend Harvard.
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NEW YORK
Neal Wadhwa , 18, of East Setauket studied the relationship between
topology and geometry in Calabi-Yau supermanifolds, which are special
subspaces of n-dimensional space over the complex numbers, for his
mathematics project in the Intel Science Talent Search.
These manifolds, of special interest to string theorists, arise in
theoretical physics as well as mathematics. Neal shows that a natural
generalization to supermanifolds of a result of Yau's on Calabi-Yau
manifolds is false. He also considers notions of distance, called
metrics, which can live on the manifolds in question. At Ward Melville
High School, Neal is both president of the math team and captain of the
science bowl. He has also dedicated more than 150 hours of community
service at the Stony Brook University Hospital. An avid pianist and
trumpeter, he has performed in multiple concerts since 2001.
He is an author of a paper on Super Calabi-Yau manifolds, which has
been submitted to the journal Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical
Physics. The son of Drs. Nand and Nandita Wadhwa, Neal hopes to attend
MIT and pursue his interests in mathematics, computer science and
engineering.
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NEW YORK
Sagar Viplov Mehta , 17, of Roslyn Heights, focused on wound healing
and tissue engineering for his Intel Science Talent Search project in
materials science.
Intrigued by the possibility of a "smart matrix" that could heal
chronic wounds more effectively, he intended to optimize the properties
of hyaluronic acid (HA) hydrogels (gels in which water is the
dispersion medium) used for wound healing and tissue engineering
applications. He developed methods to control the elasticity and
morphology of cells on HA hydrogels by modifying the mechanical and
chemical properties of the hydrogel itself.
He believes his methods will be used in future attempts to create an
ideal wound-healing scaffold based on HA hydrogels and also to
replicate human tissue in vitro on HA hydrogels. He hopes his findings
will ultimately benefit millions of burn victims, diabetics and surgery
patients.
Recipient of numerous awards for math and science, Sagar has perfect
SAT scores and is first in his class of 138 at The Wheatley School in
Old Westbury. He captains the varsity tennis team, competes in track
and field and is lead clarinetist in the jazz band. The son of Drs.
Viplov and Falguni Mehta, he plans to attend Harvard.
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Indian-American students who made the top ten in previous years
2004 Third Place: A $ 50,000 scholarship was awarded to Ryna Karnik,
17, a student of Oregon Episcopal School in Portland, Oregan, was
awarded for her patent-pending design method for constructing
microchips which may save developers time and money when creating and
testing prototype semiconductor chips.
2003 Fifth place: A $25,000 scholarship was awarded to Naveen Sinha, 18
of Los Alamos High School in Los Alamos, New Mexico for his project
"Bubble-based Resonance-Doppler Technique of Liquid Characterization."
2002 Ninth place: A $20,000 scholarship was awarded to Vivek
Venkatachalam, 18, of Gov. Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights,
New Jersey. His physics project is titled "Analysis of the Omega
Diagram for Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy and Type Ia
Supernovae."
2001 Sixth Place: a $25,000 scholarship was awarded to Vinod Easwaran
Nambudiri, 17, of Rye Brook, N.Y., a student at Blind Brook High
School, for his behavioural and social science project titled
"Alteration of Sleep and Daytime Cognitive Performance in Adolescents
as a Result of Nocturnal Extraocular Light Exposure."
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