The Indian American community has made its presence felt in different walks of life, including education, business and politics, even though they constitute only 1% of the total US population. In our last article in the series of stories about young Indians, we gave a shout-out to 17-year-old Jothi Ramaswamy from New York who, inspired by her engineer mother, holds workshops to push girls for STEM careers as part of her nonprofit ‘ThinkSTEAM’.
19-year-old Kavya Kopparapu from Virginia is the newest face of our ‘Young Indian’ series at Travel Beats, an overseas Indian community portal by Indian Eagle Travel. Indian American Kavya Kopparapu has received the most coveted National STEM Education Award 2019 for her revolutionary invention having the sole objective of making treatments far more effective for glioblastoma, the most fatal form of brain cancer.
Recognized as an extraordinarily talented and accomplished individual by STEM Education US, Kavya Kopparapu is a science whizz of Herndon, Virginia. A student of biology and computer science at Harvard University, Kavya has invented an AI technology-supported device named GlioVision that pictures characteristics of brain tumor in shorter time and at a lesser cost than the existing traditional methods. The USP of Kavya Kopparapu’s GlioVision for effective brain cancer treatment is that her invention relies upon a scanned image of biopsy rather than a DNA sample.
Kavya Kopparapu’s invention for effective brain cancer treatment uses a deep learning computer technology to decipher the molecular structure and the genetic characteristics of brain tumors with absolute accuracy. Kavya’s invention not only takes treatment of such a deadly disease as brain cancer to the next level but also motivates other girls to make it big in STEM.
Herndon-based Kavya Kopparapu is not just a science whizz, but a social entrepreneur and an agent of change. She is the founder and CEO of Girls Computing League, “a nonprofit who aims to empower underrepresented groups in the technology workplace by fostering the interests of young women in computer science, data science, and technology.”
Also Check: Indian American Girl from Virginia Invents Low-cost Heart Disease Therapy
Kavya’s Girls Computing League does financially help underprivileged girls and minority students pursue STEM careers, provides meritorious students internship opportunities to work with some of the technology conglomerates in the United States, delivers resources for individual learning to public schools to expose students to the latest technologies, and strives to redefine what makes a modern-day computer scientist. It also teaches coding and data science to students in the Washington Metropolitan Area.
One of the ardent advocates of STEM for girls in North America, Kavya Kopparapu has other groundbreaking innovations to her credit. At the age of 16, she designed and developed a low-cost, portable, machine learning-powered AI system to diagnose diabetic retinopathy, a common but serious optical ailment which causes blindness if it goes undetected. Kavya’s grandfather suffered from diabetic retinopathy.
An alumnus of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, VA, Kavya Kopparapu has won several awards and accolades. One of the 2018 Regeneron Science Talent Search Finalists, she featured on Time Magazine’s 2018 list of influential teens. She has been a US Presidential Scholar too. She was invited to deliver talks at the NASA Kennedy Space Center and the Smithsonian Institute.
Indian American Kavya Kopparapu’s GlioVision for cost-efficient diagnosis of glioblastoma and effective brain cancer treatment is expected to help millions across the globe.
Travel Beats, a subsidiary of Indian Eagle Travel, publishes latest visa, immigration, passport, aviation and Indian community stories. A trusted travel booking partner of Indians in USA, Indian Eagle has a proven track record of booking cheap business flights from USA to India round the year.
Would like to get your newsletter