Contest for middle school students had 6 desi finalists.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Two Indian American youth are among the winners of the 2013 Broadcom Masters competition.
The contest, which is open to middle schoolers (sixth, seventh, and eighth grades) all around the US, listed Mihir Garimella and Sidhika Balachandar among its 14 finalists who visited Washington, DC to show off their scientific inventions.
Garimella – who hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – did a project in which he was able to digitally recreate smells. The project was called “ScentIt,” and it won Garimella a $3,500 prize, which will be used to pay for his choice of any STEM (Science Technology Math Engineering) summer camp offered throughout the US.
Balachandar, who is from Gainesville, Florida, did a project on creating more effective soundproofing, humorously titling her project “Can You Keep It Down!” She was able to demonstrate how the usage of certain combinations of material can dampen sound more effectively than others, for which she won a prize of $2,500, also good towards STEM summer camps.
There were 30 finalists in total, including another four Indian Americans: Aakashi Agarwal (eighth grader from Hamden, Connecticut), Dhruv Iyer (eighth grader from Chandler, Arizona), Rhea Kamat (eighth grader from San Antonio, Texas), and Smita Mohindra (seventh grader from Yorktown Heights, NY).
Agarwal’s project was entitled “TACE Inhibitors as Non-Biological Drugs for Treating Rheumatoid Arthritis,” Iyer’s was “From the Playground to the Boardroom: Modified R-P-S Game as a Model for Negotiations with Constraints,” Kamat’s project was called “Broccoli Power: Effect of Sulforaphane on Tadpole Development,” while Mohindra’s was entitled “Novel Strategies in the Treatment of Vertebrobasilar Insufficiency Using Sensors.”
Broadcom is an Irvine, California-based company that specializes in semiconductors, which are used in wireless and broadband communication systems. Founded in 1991, it employs 11,750 people worldwide, including offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad. Earlier this year, it was listed at #327 on the Fortune 500 list of companies based on revenue.
Photos courtesy of The Broadcom Foundation.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com