Chak De India! These students indeed make the entire country proud

MUMBAI, INDIA: Seventeen young innovators from India put up a brilliant show at the recently concluded Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), bagging 5 Grand awards and 6 Special awards. The Indian team won seven projects across Plant Sciences, Embedded Systems, Systems Software, Materials Science and Mathematics categories.

Onkar Singh Gujral from La Martiniere for Boys School in Kolkata won the first award of $1,000 from the Association for Computing Machinery and an Intel ISEF Second Grand Award of $1,500 for his project Image Processing Algorithms towards Optical Detection of 2D Nanomaterials.

Arsh Shah Dilbagi from DAV Public School, Panipat won the two first awards of $1000 and $500 from the American Intellectual Property Law Association and Patent and Trademark Office Society respectively. He was also awarded an Intel ISEF Third Grand Award of $1000 in the Embedded Systems category, and a Third Award of $500 from the American Psychological Association for the project, Breath into Speech for the Disabled.

An Intel ISEF Third Grand Award of $1,000 went to Ravi Pradip from the Dayapuram Residential School in Kerala for his project Plumeria Blooms for Organic Electronics in the Materials Science category.

In the Plant Sciences category, Maharaja Agarsain Public School Delhi’s Mansi Aggarwal and Harshit Jindal received the Intel ISEF Fourth Grand Award of $500 for their project Begonia nepalensis: An Effective Herbal Ointment against Enterobiasis. Also winning the Intel ISEF Fourth Grand Award of $500 were Aditya Bhargava and Komal S from Sharada Vidyanikethana Public School, Mangalore for their Materials Science project Highly Sensitive Nano-Ferrite for Detection of Carbon Monoxide in Air.

Certificate of Honorable Mentions went to Aditya Ashish Bhople from Narayana Vidyalayam, Nagpur for his project Autoreader: A Wearable Assistant for the Visually Impaired in the Embedded Systems category, as well as Dhirubhai Ambani International School Mumbai’s Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir for his project A Generalization of the Determinant to Rectangular Matrices: Implications in Gauge Theory in the Math category.

Other teams from Kochi, Mangalore, Panipat and Mumbai win $5000 in cash awards and special mentions, Intel said in a prepared statement.

The year 2015 marked 15 years of India’s participation at Intel ISEF, and the largest ever Indian team comprising of 30 young innovators. 17 of these young innovators showcased 12 innovative projects and ideas at the event, spanning topics from wearable technology to big data analytics to renewable energy.

“Intel believes young people are key to future innovation and that in order to confront the global challenges of tomorrow, we need students from all backgrounds to get involved in science, technology, engineering and math,” said Kumud Srinivasan, President, Intel India.

“We are extremely proud of this remarkable achievement by these young scientists from India. Their success at Intel ISEF is a celebration of the spirit of innovation and scientific inquiry that will bring relevant, practical and innovative solutions to social situations by intelligently leveraging technology.” said Dr Rajiv Sharma, Executive Director, Indo-US Science & Technology Forum (IUSSTF).