Regeneron Science Talent Search, considered the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition was won by Indrani Das, 17, of Oradell, New Jersey. Forty finalists, were honored on March 14 at the annual Regeneron Science Talent Search Awards Gala for their research projects demonstrating exceptional scientific and mathematical ability, taking home more than $1.8 million in awards, a Regeneron press release said.
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Indrani has won the $250,000 award for her study of a possible approach to treating the death of neurons due to teh brain injury or neurodegenerative disease. A contributor to neuron death is astrogliosis, a condition that occurs when the cells called astrocytes react to the injury by growing, dividing and reducing their uptake of glutamate, which in excess is toxic to neurons.
She showed in a laboratory model that exosomes that are isolated from astrocytes are transfected with microRNA-124a, both has improved astrocyte uptake of glutamate and increased the neuron survival, the press release said.
Second place and $175,000 went to Aaron Yeiser, 18, of Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, for his development of a new mathematical method for solving partial differential equations on complicated geometries. Third place and $150,000 went to Arjun Ramani, 18, of West Lafayette, Indiana, for blending the mathematical field of graph theory with computer programming to answer the questions about networks.
“Now more than ever, we need our nation’s best and brightest young minds to pursue their interest in science and use their talents to solve our world’s most intractable problems,” said Maya Ajmera, president and CEO of Society for Science & the Public and Publisher of Science News. “I congratulate our finalists, who are all poised to become our future scientific leaders.”
Other Indian-Americans among the top 10 winners include:
Fifth Place: Archana Verma, 17, of Jericho, New York, had received a $90,000 award for her study of the molecular orbital energy dynamics of dyes, which may in future result in windows that produce solar energy.
Seventh Place: Prathik Naidu, 18, of Potomac Falls, Virginia, had received a $70,000 award for his creation of a new machine learning software to study 3-D interactions of the human genome in cancer.
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Ninth Place: Vrinda Madan, 17, of Orlando, Florida, had received a $50,000 award for her study of 24 potential compounds for the treatment of malaria, in which she has found two potential candidates that appear to target the disease-causing organism in a novel way and may warrant further study.
The remaining 30 finalists each received $25,000.
By Premji
