Four South Asians Advance to Siemens National Finals

Four South Asian high school students — from Texas, Massachusetts and New York — have advanced to the national finals of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology, the nation’s leading science, engineering and math contest for high school students.

All four were team competition winners and will vie for $500,000 in scholarships at the national finals in Washington, D.C., Dec. 7-10. The two top prizes are $100,000 in individual and team events.

The winning team members at the regional held at the University of Texas at Austin Nov. 8-9 were: Indian American Shriya Das, a junior at The Hockaday School in Dallas, Texas, and Alyssa Chen, a junior at Highland Park High School in Dallas.

They will share a $6,000 scholarship for their project, titled “Encapsulation of c-di-GMP Adjuvant into pH-tunable Micelle-based Nanoparticle Heightens Immune Response.”

The team champs at the University of Notre Dame regional Nov. 8-9 were: Kavish Gandhi, a Indian American junior at Newton North High School in Newton, Mass., and Noah Golowich, a junior at Lexington High School in Lexington, Mass.

They split a $6,000 scholarship for the project, “Partition Regularity of Linear Homogeneous Equations and Inequalities.”

Finally, three seniors, including two South Asians, from George W. Hewlett High School in Hewlett, N.Y., won the team event at the regional held Nov. 15-16 at Carnegie Mellon University.

The two South Asians are Indian American Priyanka Wadgaonkar and Pakistani American Zainab Mahmood. Their teammate was JiaWen Pei.

They won a $6,000 scholarship for their project: “The Isolation and Characterization of an Ozone Responsive Stress Related Protein (OZS) in Ceratopteris richardii.”

Gandhi and Golowich studied Ramsey theory, a field of mathematics that deals with large systems and structure, with applications for theoretical computer science and game theory.

Their research involved partition regularity and provided “new and creative insights,” said judge David Galvin, associate professor of mathematics at the University of Notre Dame.

“We were so impressed by the mathematical maturity of these young scholars that have already produced Ph.D.-level research,” he said. “Partition regularity was first introduced in 1933, and they are shedding light on a mathematical question that has not been completely solved after more than 80 years.”

Gandhi is a math contest veteran and a three-time participant in the annual North American Envirothon competition. He won second place with 5,000 teams entered in 2012. He is interested in pursuing a career in mathematics, software engineering, economics or theoretical physics.

In research on vaccine development, Das and Chen merged the disciplines of nanotechnology and immunology to develop adjuvants — molecules that can boost immune responses.

By encapsulating the adjuvant, the team was able to increase its potency and facilitate delivery directly into the immune cell. Their discovery has the potential to develop more vaccines for cancer and difficult-to-cure infectious diseases.

“Their innovative approach bridges two disparate disciplines that may one day yield a new class of powerful vaccines for treating devastating human diseases,” said Ilya Finkelstein, assistant professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

Das is involved in choir, Indian classical music and dance. A member of the robotics club and a reading and math tutor, she hopes for a career in medicine or technology.

Wadgaonkar and her team examined the “underappreciated effect of air pollution, particularly ozone, on plant health and crop yield, isolating how plants adapt to that physical stress.”

They found a correlation between ozone resistance and a gene called “ozone responsive stress related protein,” which underwent multiple adaptations early in plant evolution, possibly to cope with the effects of ozone.

They discovered the gene has the potential to make important crops more resistant to ozone and other physical stressors such as drought and the increasing salinity of soil.

Wadgaonkar’s parents — a cell biologist and a gastroenterologist —sparked her interest in science and her aspiration to become an emergency room physician. She won the George Eastman Young Leaders award.

Zainab is a member of the National Honor Society, a Euro Challenge semifinalist, recipient of the U.S. Army Award and the second-place winner at the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair. A volunteer at the Franklin Early Childhood Center and a varsity lacrosse player, she plans to pursue a career in engineering.

Read more at http://www.indiawest.com