Four NRI students named for Intel Science Talent Search award

Washington, Feb. 03, 2007
Suraj Bhandari

Four NRI students: Venkat Mikkilineni, Neha Anil Deshpande, Abhinav Rohatgi and Sara Dana Bayefsky Anand are among 40 students who have been named as finalists for 2007's Intel Science Talent Search award.

The top prize is a $100,000 four-year scholarship. The second-place finalist receives a $75,000 scholarship, and the third-prize winner gets a $50,000 scholarship. Fourth-through sixth-place finalists each receive a $25,000 scholarship; seventh-through tenth-prize winners each receive a $20,000 scholarship. Each finalist will also receive a new laptop run with the Intel CoreTM2 Duo processor.

• Sohan Venkat Mikkilineni, 17, from Detroit is a Captain of the FIRST Robotics Club and has received a certificate of tribute from Governor Granholm for his scientific achievements. He has submitted a math project for the contest that analysed determinantal sequences

• Neha Anil Deshpande, 17, from New Jersey has submitted her Zoology research project studying subito and pavarotti genes in Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) will one day lead to the end of birth defects in human infants.

• Abhinav Rohatgi, 17, from New York, Garden City High School has submitted the effects of MTBE, a gasoline additive, mortality of marine mollusks and project in environmental science.

• Sara Dana Bayefsky Anand, 17, from the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, New York has submitted zoology project based on research she performed in Israel's Negev Desert on the European free-tailed bat and recording the echolocation calls of these wild free-flying bats

The Science Talent Search (STS) is America's oldest and most highly regarded pre-college science competition. For more than 60 years, this competition-often referred to as the "junior Nobel Prize"-has provided an incentive and an arena for U.S. high school seniors to complete an original research project and have it recognized by a national jury of highly regarded professional scientists.

In 1998, Intel Corporation assumed sponsorship of the program previously sponsored by the Westinghouse Foundation as a way to recognize and reward excellence in science and to encourage more young people to explore science and technology.

Since assuming the sponsorship, Intel has increased awards and scholarships from $207,000 to $1,250,000 a year and woven technology into the program

Each of the 300 students who is named a semifinalist in the Intel STS receives a $1,000 award for his or her outstanding science research. These awards are mailed to the semifinalists after the Science Talent Institute (STI) in March.

Schools: Each school receives an award of $1,000 for each semifinalist named in the Intel STS. The award must be used to further support excellence in science, math, or engineering education at the receiving school. In the case of home schooling, the awards are given to the affiliated school or school district of the home school. The award is mailed to the school after the STI in March.