Nearly two dozen Indian descent young students were among 161 who were acknowledged and honored for the United States Presidential Scholars Program by the U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month at the White House, Washington, D.C. The students were honored as nation’s most distinguished graduating high school seniors.
Mihir Patel, a graduating student from the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, who was one among students received honor said, “It was super cool getting to meet the President. It’s not something you really expect to happen and honestly, we were all kind of in shock. I was just amazed as I wandered around before the pictures, seeing all the history around me.” Patel will be joining Stanford University.
In brief remarks to the children who had come from all parts of America, Trump told the scholars that they were doing great things and asked them to keep it up. “Keep doing what you’re doing… Have a good life,” one participant recalled Trump telling them.
The U.S. President Presidential Scholars Scheme was established in 1964, by the executive of a president.
“It was phenomenal. Not only because we got to roam around the East Wing of the White House, or because we got to meet the President. It was special because we had an opportunity to get to know so many other talented and bright students. Even though we were all complete strangers, there were a similar sense of drive, passion, and spirit that made us incredibly fast friends” said Kavya Kopparapu, also from TJHSST and will be joining the Harvard University this year.
Patel as well developed a tool for automated identification of Islamic State (IS) propaganda accounts on social media using user statistics, text analysis, and image recognition through deep learning. He later presented the findings before the U.S. National Security Agency.
The U.S. Presidential Scholars Program is considered one of the nation’s highest honors for high school students.
By Sowmya Sangam
