Indian-American students win $1mn Intel science talent contest

Six Indian-American students have grabbed top positions, including two winning spots in two separate categories, in a USD 1 million Intel Talent Search contest, a prestigious US competition for young innovators. 

Of the first three-place awards, Indian-American students won two of them -- Amol Punjabi won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Basic Research, while Maya Varma won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation. Paige Brown from Maine won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Global Good.

Same was the case with the second and third spots in all the three categories, as per the list of winners released by Intel Science on Tuesday night. Punjabi, 17, from Massachusetts, developed software that could help drug makers develop new therapies for cancer and heart disease. He is the lead author of a paper on nano-particles published in ACS Nano and co-author of a paper on a related topic in Nano-scale.

Varma, 17, from California, used USD 35 worth of hobbyist electronics and free computer-aided design tools to create a low-cost, smartphone-based lung function analyser that diagnoses lung disease as accurately as expensive devices currently used in medical laboratories. 

Meena Jagadeesan, 17, from Illinois, won the Second Place Medal of Distinction for Basic Research. Milind Jagota, 18, from Pennsylvania, won the Second Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation. Kunal Shroff, 17, from Virginia, won the Third Place Medal of Distinction for Basic Research. 

Kavya Ravichandran, 17, from Ohio, won the Third Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation. Building on the top award prizes of USD 150,000, three second-place winners received awards of USD 75,000, and three third-place winners received awards of USD 35,000.