Five meritorious students from the Indian-origin community in America have been selected for the Rhodes Scholarship 2022. The Rhodes Scholarship is the oldest, most prestigious, and best-known academic award for international study at Oxford University. This scholarship is a fully funded fellowship for postgraduate studies at Oxford University. Since 1903, the Rhodes Scholarship has been an opportunity for the brightest students from across the world to study for a greater purpose.

Veer Sangha, Atharv Gupta, Amisha Kambath, Jupneet Singh, and Shreyas Hallur are the Indian American students among the 32 Rhodes Scholars from the USA in 2022. Two of them have interned at the US Capitol.   

Atharv Gupta, Amisha Kambath, Jupneet Singh, Shreyas Hallur (left to right)

Atharv Gupta, Virginia

One of the five Indian Americans among the Rhodes Scholars 2022, Atharv Gupta from Virginia wishes to take up Social Science of the Internet as a post-graduate discipline at Oxford. An M.Sc. degree in Social Science of the Internet will equip him with knowhow of local economies being shaped by digital technologies in the post-pandemic world. Atharv, a Georgetown University senior, has interned with the US State Department and the World Bank.

Studying the impact of digital technology on small-scale entrepreneurs in emerging markets became his interest on trip to India during the pandemic. His grandparents live in Rishikesh, north India. He saw his grandfather and other people pay for essential commodities with digital money through an app in the local market unlike the pre-pandemic times. “All of a sudden, my grandfather was a savvy digital payment user,” he said.

A major in science, technology, and international affairs; Atharv Gupta among the 2022 Rhodes Scholarship winners has researched on several international development institutions supporting emerging digital economies. He received Paul F. Pelosi Scholarship in 2021, which funded his full-time internship in public service. Interestingly, he also writes about television and cinema, an altogether different genre.

Amisha Kambath and Jupneet Singh, California

Two of the six Harvard College Seniors among the 2022 Rhodes Scholars are of Indian origin and from California. They are Amisha Kambath and Jupneet K Singh. A resident of San Ramon, Amisha is a Harvard College senior and a major in social studies. She will be pursuing a post-graduate degree in social studies and American studies at Oxford. Amisha Kambath, also a Truman Scholar, has been President of the Harvard College Project for Justice.

Criminal justice reform and economic opportunity in the American criminal legal system are the areas that she is passionate about. How the legal system can be leveraged to explore economic opportunities hidden in incarceration has been the focus of her research and studies. Community wealth building, labour market marginality, and alternatives to incarceration are her other interests. She is also a research assistant for a program in criminal justice policy and management.

Indian-origin Jupneet K Singh from California is one of the three MIT seniors selected for the Rhodes Scholarship 2022. She will do her postgraduate studies in evidence-based social intervention and policy evaluation at Oxford next fall. She studied the biochemistry of human innate immunity and microbial pathogenesis while majoring in Chemistry. Her portfolio includes her experience in natural products research at the Nolan Lab. She worked with de-addiction centers across India this summer 2022.

Jupneet Singh aspires to be a trauma surgeon in the US Air Force. Following Oxford, she wants to attend a medical school. Establishing the representation of minorities in health care through the US Public Health Commissioned Corps is one of her goals. She initiated a few programs, including Pathways to Promise, to support the health of the juvenile victims of domestic violence in Ventura. She supported the programs with her fellowships.

Shreyas Hallur, Arizona

Among the 2022 Rhodes Scholars from the USA, Indian-origin Shreyas Hallur is looking to study Medical Anthropology at Oxford University in 2023. A resident of Phoenix in Arizona, he is a research assistant for autism and brain development at Duke University, North Carolina. He is also a member of STEM Advisory Board at Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center. At the same time, he is an undergraduate research fellow at Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

Shreyas Hallur, a staunch advocate for autistic individuals, interned at the US Department of Health and Human Services this year. He was also a staff intern at Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services. He launched a program to support the inclusion and representation of autistic students in museum-based STEM activities. He is co-president of the Duke Disability Alliance and co-director of Disability Policy for the Duke Student Government.

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2022 seems to be the year of young Indian-origin winners in America. It began with Jaskaran Singh having won the Jeopardy! National College Championship. It continues with three budding STEM leaders of Indian origin having finished among the top 10 winners of Regeneron Science Talent Search 2022.

The Regeneron Science Talent Search, America’s oldest and most prestigious STEM competition, helps discover budding scientists among high school seniors across the country. Also known as the US’ Junior Nobel in math and science, this competition “brings together the best and brightest young minds to present their experimental projects, futuristic solutions, scientific innovations, and mind-blowing problem-solving abilities to leading scientists. The US saw the emergence of four Indian-origin teens from the immigrant community, among the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2021 winners, for their scientific creativity and innovative thinking.

Neil Chowdhury, Washington

The Indian community of Washington is rejoicing at Neil Chowdhury’s success in the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2022. Neil, 18, finished fifth among the top 10 winners of the United States’ Junior Nobel in STEM and received a cash award of $90,000 for his innovative computational method of studying the role of histones implicated in colon cancer. The project he submitted to the Regeneron Science Talent Search shows his finds that histone proteins cause changes to the way a long string of DNA loops and coils itself to fit inside the nucleus of a cell. In his experiment, Neil tried to replicate the method of modulating the DNA’s physical formation using molecular simulations of DNA polymers and coded the simulation in Python, an open-source programming language. His experiment shows that a modification of histone proteins can help with colon cancer by causing changes in the folding of DNA strings.

Pravalika Gayatri Putalapattu, Virginia

Indians of Virginia pride themselves on having a budding Indian-origin scientist among the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2022 winners. 17-year-old Pravalika Gayatri, a resident of Centerville, finished seventh and received a cash award of $70,000 for her project on real-time monitoring of laparoscopic surgeries. She designed a video-assisted program that uses machine learning to detect errors, if there is any, in surgical steps that doctors take in the operating room, so that a corrective measure can be taken immediately. A close relative’s accidental death due to a preventable surgical mistake in the operating room prompted Pravalika to take up the challenging project. Her system uses image segmentation and network optimization to help detect errors five times faster than the existing systems.

Neil Rathi, California

Neil Rathi having ended up being one of the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2022 winners, is a matter of pride for California Indians. He finished at the eighth place and received a $60,000 award for his experimental project on how human minds process and optimize language for efficient communication through the “smallest meaningful unit of a word”; for example, how ‘ed’ in words such as ‘played’, ‘talked’, and ‘studied’ indicate both past tense and word completion. His project was aimed at identifying what linguistic patterns languages have in common. He optimized his machine learning-based model that he developed as part of the project to find ‘patterns of informational fusion’ through syntax datasets in four languages. Indian-origin Neil Rathi’s discovery is a step towards understanding how sophisticated the functional dynamics of human minds are.

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The untimely demise of Sidharth Shukla, a popular Indian television actor, who recently succumbed to a heart attack at 40, gives a grim picture of heart disease on the rise in young adults the world over. As of the 2018 stats, a little more than 30 million adults were diagnosed with heart disease in the United States. Every year, the US population shrinks by nearly 7 lakh lives claimed by heart disease, a leading cause of death in America. Several reports based on the 2019 stats showed that 1 in every 5 heart attack survivors was under 40.

Marissa Sumathipala, an undergraduate in neuroscience research and computational biology at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, was the first Indian American of Loudoun County, Virginia to have been a Regeneron Science Talent Search Finalist among 1800 contestants in 2018. She had received a scholarship of $25000 for her ground-breaking approach to reinventing the cardiovascular disease therapy for millions of people affected by heart ailments. Her take on the therapeutic treatment improves survival chances by 50 to 100%.

Indian American Marissa Sumathipala’s project – Reinventing Cardiovascular Disease Therapy: A Novel Dual Therapeutic with FOXO Transcription Factor and AMP Kinase – has proven effective for diseased hearts and damaged heart muscles. She said, “Most significantly, this study presents FOXO and AMPK as a novel dual therapeutic for not just effectively and holistically treating a cardio vascular disease but preventing it as well.” The dual protein-based therapeutic also treats metabolic aspects of a diseased heart by reducing high glucose and lipid levels. It improves contractility and lessens arrhythmias.

Pained by the hereditary history of heart disease in her family, Marissa Sumathipala took on treatments for heart disease and did extensive research on it for three years at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her study is based on the latest advancements in epigenetic therapy, a most popular outcome of drug development. Epigenetic therapy works by modifying the behavior of genes in patients of heart diseases.

One of the 161 US Presidential Scholars selected from 3.6 million high school students in 2018, Marissa Sumathipala applied her study to fruit flies and tested efficacy of the dual therapeutic for a whole summer. The process was so delicate and difficult that it took a considerable period of time to perfect any therapeutic innovation. She filmed the experiment on fruit flies and its efficacy in restoring the normal function of heart.

“I have long nurtured a vision of being a medical scientist, leveraging core engineering principles to solve contemporary biological and medical problems,” said Marissa, who developed an inquisitive mind and an interest in science after trekking in America’s nationals parks. One of the first things she felt an urge to know, when she was 12 years old, was whether pesticides caused multigenerational effects in human beings.

She developed a statistical model to predict population-specific side effects of drugs and the impacts of COVID on drug safety during her current bioinformatics research internship at Harvard Medical School. Since September 2016, she has been a research intern at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She worked as a clinical research assistant in the orthopedic surgery department of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where she analyzed the challenges, costs and outcomes of telemedicine in orthopedic care, during the pandemic.

A two-time winner of the Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair Grand Prize, Indian American Marissa Sumathipala founded Loudoun County’s first International Genetically Engineered Machines team and led the team’s project to create special yeast for effective treatment of industrial wastewater. The success of the project was recognized worldwide, fetching them some of the most prestigious awards in science & engineering.

One of the 150 scholars selected from 140,000 applicants in 2018, Marissa received a scholarship of $20,000 from Coca Cola Foundation. In the same year, she won Virginia Governor’s STEM Essay Award and received $10,000 scholarship. She was one of the top 50 in computer science, who were awarded by the National Center for Women & Information Technology. In 2016, she won Intel ISEF’s Grand Award in the cellular and molecular biology category for her new therapeutic strategy for cardiovascular diseases. She was named a 2018 Davidson Fellow by Davidson Institute for Talent Development. She won the 2021 Collegiate Award from the National Center for Women in Technology.

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In October 2021, the US will crown the nation’s best young scientist among the top 10 finalists, including seven Indian Americans, for the Discovery 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Among thousands of promising innovators and inventors with a problem-solving attitude, only the best ten budding scientists make it to the grand finale of America’s premier middle school science competition. While vying for America’s Top Young Scientist title, the finalists demonstrate the transformative power of STEM and their commitment to solving everyday issues.

The 10 finalists for the Discovery 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2021 include seven Indian American teens: Veda Murthy of Virginia, Snigtha Mohanraj of Connecticut, Samarth Mahapatra of Georgia, Abhinav Anne of Illinois, Moitri Santra of Florida, Aadrit Talukdar and Viraj Pandey of California. The winner of America’s Top Young Scientist 2021 title will be awarded a scholarship of $25,000.

Veda Murthy, Virginia 

The Discovery 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2021 finalists of Indian origin include 13-year-old Veda Murthy from Fairfax, Virginia. Driven by her curiosity to find out how children with autism spectrum disorder cope with communication difficulties during online learning, Veda Murthy developed the Cognitive Emotion Interpretation Application (CEIA). The application helps teachers interpret the emotions of ASD children and teach them accordingly. She aspires to be an epidemiologist as epidemiologists are the first to predict the outbreak of major pandemics. Artificial Intelligence is her favorite invention of the past 100 years, because AI technology has a wide range of applications in the medical field.

Aadrit Talukdar, California

13-year-old Aadrit Talukdar of San Jose, California is one of the seven Indian-origin finalists in the race for America’s ‘Top Young Scientist of 2021’ title. 7^th grader Aadrit has developed a scalable and reusable shipping box to reduce or eliminate the use of oversized boxes and excess packing materials for e-commerce shipments. Since the outbreak of the pandemic early in 2020, the online retail shopping volume has grown manifold, thereby increasing the waste of packing materials. Aadrit Talukdar’s scalable and reusable shipping box will help save environment by reducing the waste of materials. He aspires to be a good person and a responsible citizen over anything.

Snigtha Mohanraj, Connecticut

Indian American Snigtha Mohanraj of Connecticut is vying for a grand prize of $25,000 and the America’s ‘Top Young Scientist 2021’ title. Her discovery of Ferro-Sponge, an innovative way to remove micro plastics and oil from contaminated water, got her on the list of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2021 finalists. She will develop her discovery into a concrete solution to the increasing micro-plastic contamination of drinking water in different parts of the world. Snigtha Mohanraj, an 8^th grader, aspires to be an environmental scientist and hopes to make the planet a better place.

Samarth Mahapatra, Georgia 

Georgia’s Samarth Mahapatra is one of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2021 finalists for her unique idea of using technology to make life easy for people with vision impairments. Her idea entails the use of edge computing and advance vision algorithms to help visually impaired people cook with ease. A resident of Marietta, Samarth Mahapatra aspires to be a computational biologist or data scientist and make the most of machine learning in the field of bioscience. Her favorite invention of the past 100 years is CRISPR, a technology that can alter genetic traits in humans, animals, and plants.

Abhinav Anne, Illinois

The Indian community of Illinois has pinned its hopes on 13-year-old Abhinav Anne for bringing the America’s ‘Top Young Scientist 2021’ title home. A resident of Plainfield, he has developed a novel way to extend the safety and shelf-life of blood products with Nitric Oxide producing Polyurethane bag. In the next 15 years, Abhinav wants to become a biomedicine scientist and a climate change researcher. He intends to invent new cures for AIDS and Leukemia through extensive research on stem cell transplant, gene editing and immune modulation. Studying greenhouse effects to mitigate harmful implications of climate change is one of his goals.

Moitri Santra, Florida

11-year-old Moitri Santra from Florida is the youngest of all Indian American finalists for the 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2021. Her entry to the national science contest is a novel optimized gel composed of Chitosan and Citric acid to induce algae coagulation and settlement in Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) effected bodies of water to reduce the suffocation and death of animal life. Modern telescope that helps to observe celestial objects in deep recesses of the universe is her favorite invention of the past 100 years. Moitri is a 7^th grader at Jackson Heights Middle School.

Viraj Pandey, California

12-year-old Viraj Pandey from California is going to the finals of the Discovery 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2021. A resident of San Jose, Viraj developed the idea of applying non-toxic graphene quantum dots (GDQs) to help track the location of endangered species and prevent the poaching of animals. He is also investigating the Photoluminescence Signature of Graphene Quantum Dots in conservation of natural habitats. It is non-intrusive and scalable. He aspires to be a scientist and unravel the mysteries that exist in nature.

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The Novel Coronavirus pandemic induced cancellation of several global events, including the Scripps National Spelling Bee 2020 this year. However, the 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2020 did not give in to the COVID19 health crisis. Rather, the haunt for America’s Top Young Scientist of 2020 is advancing to the finals later this year. Sponsored by 3M and Discovery, the United States’ premier middle school science competition will see 10 finalists compete for the title, America’s Top Young Scientist 2020.

One of the 10 finalists for the 2020 3M Young Scientist Challenge, Indian-origin Samvrit Rao from Virginia has developed BOREAS, a cost-effective telemedicine solution for both patients and physicians. Having the potential of a breakthrough invention during the global health crisis, Samvrit’s BOREAS uses a software-hardware app to capture and transmit a user’s breath sounds, along with symptomatic data if there is any, to physicians.

A diagnostic analysis of breath sounds helps detect bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma, COPD and other pulmonary ailments. Nearly 10% of the United States’ 300 million people are affected by pulmonary disease, a leading cause of death worldwide. With Samvrit Rao’s easy-to-use telemedicine app, doctors can identify whether a patient is a COVID19 positive by analyzing symptomatic data out of his/her breath sounds. BOREAS will come in handy for healthcare professionals this pandemic, especially when millions of people are yet to be tested for COVID19.

How BOREAS, which is Samvrit’s entry to the finals of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, is explained in his video below. Using a lapel microphone and a stethoscope plugged into the audio port of a smartphone, his innovative telemedicine app records and captures the breath sounds along with the symptoms that a patient exhibits.

A 7^th grader at Stone Mill Middle School in Ashburn, 12-year-old Samvrit Rao also explains what motivated him to invent BOREAS in the video. When he was younger, he had to visit his pediatrician whenever he got an asthma attack. At times, it was difficult to schedule appointments, he says. “If there were a telemedicine app like BOREAS back then, I would have not made as many visits to the doctor as I did,” he adds. However, the existing telemedicine system is not developed enough to relay breath sounds.

Among the top ten 3M Young Scientist Challenge finalists, seven are Americans of Indian origin, including Samvrit Rao, in grades 5-8. If Samvrit happens to win the title, America’s Top Young Scientist 2020, he will get a grand scholarship of $25,000 and an opportunity to work on his innovation under the mentorship of a 3M scientist. In view of the COVID19 crisis, the 2020 3M Young Scientist Challenge will be held virtually on October 12 and 13.

The Virginia State Merit winner in the 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2019, Samvrit Rao thinks Artificial Intelligence is the best invention of the past 100 years. He aspires to be an immunologist. It was Samvrit Rao who, along with Karan Menon from New Jersey, had won the International Geography Bee championship in 2019.

“Immunologists cater to various diseases from Cancer to infectious diseases. Immunologists help develop vaccines for COVID19-like infectious diseases and also immune cell-based therapies to cure cancer. I developed an interest in immunology when I participated in Science Olympiad in 5th grade and got to study immunology,” said Samvrit.

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A whopping 67.3 million people speak a language other than English in the United States, according to the US State of Department’s 2018 stats. Among them are Indian immigrants who mostly speak in Hindi, Gujarati, Telugu, Bengali, Punjabi and other native Indian languages at home. Hindi, Gujarati and Telugu are the most widely spoken Indian languages in the USA.

Picture Credit: 22under22.hercampus.com

To facilitate first-hand access to every minute detail of the Novel Coronavirus pandemic for the non-English speaking populace of the US, Indian American Pooja Chandrashekar has initiated translation of the COIVD19 information into more than 30 languages including Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengal, Punjabi, Urdu, and Tamil.

22-year-old Pooja Chandrashekar whose parents had emigrated from Bangalore, India is a first-year Harvard medical student. Knowing that half knowledge about anything is dangerous, which leads to spiraling of misinformation in communities, Pooja took up the initiative to help the vulnerable section of the non-English speaking immigrant community read and comprehend  the COVID19 facts and figures in the languages they speak and understand effortlessly.

Pooja Chandrashekar’s ‘COVID19 Health Literacy Project’ is aimed at containing the COVID19 spread by providing the community-based organizations with accurate information about the current global health crisis in native Indian languages. The lack of easily comprehensible medical information about Novel Coronavirus in languages other than English does actually spur the proliferation of the deadly virus.

In no time, over 150 medical students from 35 institutions across the United States joined Pooja Chandrashekar’s COVID19 Health Literacy Project in translating the COIVD19 information and curbing the spread of the pandemic.

Pooja, a resident of Virginia and her countrywide team pooled the most useful information from several government agencies including CDC. They simplified and summarized it before passing it on to several community organizations in various Indian languages, as well as Spanish, French, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Russian, Malay, German, Vietnamese, and Italian. The condensed materials, verified by medical experts, on dos and don’ts of COVID19 prevention are also available for download in different languages from the COVID19 Health Literacy website.

A Harvard graduate in biomedical engineering and global health policy, Pooja Chandrashekar has been to India on Fulbright Scholarship in public health research on rural students with learning disabilities. She is focused on getting the best of the intersection of healthcare and technology to help autistic adolescents improve their interpersonal skills. She is also committed to developing a system that leverages artificial intelligence to predict an impending environmental crisis. Clinical data science and medical device development are among her research interests. She is known for identifying high-risk patients in vulnerable communities.

A new technology that Virginia-based Pooja Chandrashekar has developed to help diagnose mild traumatic brain injuries in athletes and military individuals is currently under clinical trials at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in DC.

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The year 2019 ended with good notes of philanthropy by the Indian American community and inspiring stories of their giving back to India. The “National American Miss Junior Teen 2019-2020” title bestowed upon Anjali Nair, an Indian-origin high school student in the US, appears to be the first good community news of 2020.

Picture credit: National American Miss/Facebook photo

Indian American Anjali Nair, a resident of Fairfax in Virginia, walked away with the coveted crown of the National American Miss Junior Teen 2019-2020 pageant held in California. She represented the state of Virginia in the national-level competition, wearing the ‘American Miss Virginia Jr. Teen’ title which she won in 2016.

The “National American Miss Junior Teen 2019-2020” title winner, Anjali Nair will be traveling the United States for most of the time in 2020. Traveling to Houston for an all-expense-paid photo shoot, and New York for the fashion week is on the card for her. She will also attend the national pageant 2020-2021 and crown the successor of the competition at the 2020 end.

An aspiring advocate of STEM for girls, Anjali Nair is looking forward to making the most of her achievement as an opportunity to promote the talent, strength and resilience of girls. She is full of hopes that girls, if given an equal platform and equal opportunities, can succeed and excel in any field, be it STEM or social sciences, and in any pursuit they choose to reach their career goals.

She is an ardent supporter of animal welfare, as well. The National American Miss Junior Teen 2019-2020 title winner hopes to use her latest success to get support and build momentum against animal euthanasia. She volunteers with a few leading animal welfare nonprofit foundations to find new, safe homes for abandoned animals. She also encourages others to adopt homeless animals.

The secret to her winning the National American Miss Junior Teen 2019-2020 title, as she said, is that she was a self-taught competitor unlike others. She acknowledges uninhibitedly that she gained public speaking skills and made food friends through this competition. Currently, she studies at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA.

Anjali Nair has her paternal roots in India and maternal roots in Sri Lanka. Her mother, Narmatha Arichandran, is a pediatrician and her father, Ram Nair, is a management consultant in Fairfax, VA.

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“United we stand, divided we fall.” The maxim is true about Indian American siblings – Kushaan Saran and Medhnaa Saran – who stand united with survivors of child labor and victims of human trafficking through their nonprofit endeavor to combat such crimes against humanity.

Residents of Virginia, Kushaan and Medhnaa are the co-founders of Touch of Life Foundation, a 501c3 charitable organization that works to rescue victims of indentured servitude and empower them to fight for their rights to education, equality, freedom and dignity.

The foundation of Medhnaa and Kushaan Saran’s selfless service to the survivors of child labor and human trafficking was their trip to India and visit to Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s ashram in Jaipur eight years ago. Very young school goers back then, the Saran siblings could not make out what an orphanage is, why many of the ashram children looked vulnerable, and why they gave them a blank look.

By the time Medhnaa and Kushaan grew up a little to understand such social evils as human trafficking for sexual and physical exploitation, they realized that they had met the children who were rescued from the traps of child labor in different parts of the country. That was the moment of epiphany when they felt for those poor children and decided to stand by them.

The Saran siblings started helping the children by raising funds, collecting clothes and other essentials for them. Their baby steps towards helping the kids became a philanthropic stride which gave birth to the nonprofit, Touch of Life Foundation in Virginia in 2016. The donation to Touch of Life Foundation goes to Kailash Satyarthi’s ashram in Jaipur for the children’s welfare programs.

Also Check: Indian American National STEM Winner for Brain Cancer Device

The way Kushaan, a high school freshman and Medhnaa, who is in the 10^th grade, raise funds rhymes with the maxim, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.”  They hold breakfast and bake sales at schools and community centers, and donate the proceeds to support the needs of the rescued kids. This year, they held a Diwali party at the Sherwood Community Center in Fairfax for the same noble purpose. Thus, Touch of Life Foundation raises nearly $25,000 every year.

The Saran siblings’ Touch of Life Foundation is recognized by Amazon for AmazonSmile program that donates a portion of the proceeds from the sales of the products to the nonprofit of a shopper’s choice. Anyone looking to support survivors of child labor and human trafficking can contribute to Touch of Life Foundation while shopping on smile.amazon.com at no extra cost.

Kushaan Saran and Medhnaa Saran support Bachpan Bachao Andolan, Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, and Global March against Child Labor through Touch of Life Foundation.

Also Check: Indian American Girl Joins US Army at Largest Military Base

A sophomore at Pinnacle Academy in Northern Virginia, Medhnaa Saran is currently working on the “Not My Child” campaign, in collaboration with schools, to make children learn to notice the signs of child labor and trafficking in their neighborhoods. Good at mentoring in math and science, she does also speak to congressmen to make laws stricter for perpetuators of crimes against children.

The Saran siblings have worked hard to make the much needed awareness about dangers of child exploitation a part of the curriculum throughout their school district. They are striving to take it to the state level.

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The Davidson Institute for Talent Development has released its 2019 list of Davidson Scholarship winners including 8 Indian American students, while five young Indian Americans have entered the final race for America’s Top Young Scientist Title 2019.

Instituted by Bob Davidson in 1999, the Davidson Fellows Scholarship program recognizes and supports the young students whose projects give scalable, affordable, innovative solutions in the fields of science, engineering, medicine, technology and mathematics aiming to make a positive difference in the lives of people. It is one of the most coveted undergraduate scholarships in the United States.

Varun Kumar

Varun Kumar of New Jersey and Natasha Maniar of California, among the Indian American achievers on the 2019 list of Davidson Fellows, will receive a $50,000 scholarship each for their projects. Neeyanth Kopparapu and Siona Prasad of Virginia, Ayush Karan of Washington, and Isha Puri of New York will be awarded a $25,000 scholarship each. Among Davidson Fellows 2019, Arita Dattamajumdar of California and Vishnu Akash Polkampally of New York have been shortlisted for a $10,000 scholarship.

Being among Davidson Fellows in 2019, Varun Kumar, 18, is confident of his research on prevention of drug resistance in aggressive cancers. As part of his project, “Dihydrotanshinone: A Pan-Therapeutic Treatment for Chemo Resistance in Cancer,” his developed a combination therapy to prevent resistance to a most commonly used drug in treatment of glioblastoma, a fatal form of brain tumor in adults.

Kumar’s combination therapy for drug resistance prevention is being considered a promising therapeutic solution to make the existing chemo therapies more effective for treatment of aggressive cancers. According to David Institute’s press release, the combination therapy is a cost-effective solution to make drugs reach the brain for better impact of treatment on glioblastoma-affected patients.

A resident of Woodcliff Lake in New Jersey, Varun Kumar is a Regeneron Science Talent Search Finalist with several research papers to his credit. He is also an AAN Neuroscience Research Prize Finalist for the same project.

Natasha Maniar

Natasha Maniar, the other Indian-origin Davidson Fellow receiving a $50K scholarship, is a freshman at MIT. She has developed a computational tool as the safest and best alternative to the currently prevalent diagnostic imaging of electrical conduction for identifying sources of atrial fibrillation (AF), a common abnormal, irregular heartbeat. According to Davidson Institute, diagnostic imaging of electrical conduction on the heart that physicians rely on for visual interpretation has affected over 33 million people all over the world.

Sunnyvale-based Natasha has proved that her computational algorithm improves the atrial fibrillation treatment by identifying the sources of chaotic electrical impulses with greater accuracy and without affecting the heart.

Also Read: 4 Indian American Girls Make Earth Green Again

Neeyanth Kopparapu

Among the 2019 Davidson Fellows receiving a $25K scholarship, Neeyanth Kopparapu of Virginia has been recognized for his automatic diagnosis system using artificial intelligence for early-stage Parkinson’s disease. Better than an MRI scan, the automatic diagnosis system integrates deep learning technology to generate highly accurate lifelike MRI images. A senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Herndon, he took up this project as diagnosis at an advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease left his grandfather resistant to common medication. Neeyanth Kopparapu’s project is expected to be a catalyst to the future research on Parkinson’s disease.

Isha Puri

18-year-old Isha Puri of New York has made early detection and precise prediction of dyslexia easier, simpler and cheaper with her application, a combination of various machine learning algorithms. Her freely accessible application is so unique that it can detect whether a child is dyslexic and predict whether a child is at risks of dyslexia with 92% accuracy, just using a computer webcam. One in every 10 kids across the world suffers from dyslexia, the most common neurological learning disability. The earlier dyslexia is detected the sooner learning difficulties can be averted. Isha Puri will attend Harvard University this fall.

A majority of families having dyslexic kids can’t afford screenings for dyslexia due to hefty costs. Isha Puri’s application, which does not require any special scientific equipment, is freely available to millions of families irrespective of their socio-economic status and physical location.

Siona Prasad

One of the Davidson Fellows 2019 receiving $25,000 each, Siona Prasad of Virginia has taken her first step towards combating climate change with her project, “Characterizing Uncertainty in Urban Inversions of Carbon Sources/Sinks using Low Cost Sensor Measurements”. She has developed an easy-to-use system integrating carbon dioxide sensor technology to measure and monitor greenhouse gas emissions. Using her invention, she precisely hinted at an emission inventory for Washington DC, enforcing strategies for mitigation of greenhouse gas emission.

Travel Beats, a subsidiary of Indian Eagle, publishes latest visa, immigration, passport, aviation and Indian American community news. A leading travel booking partner of Indians in USA, Indian Eagle not only issues confirmed flight tickets for lowest airfares to India but also strives to promote achievements of Indian community in the US.

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There is a long-standing argument over whether the Taj Mahal, a masterpiece of Mughal architecture in India and a topmost revenue-generating monument, was a Lord Shiva temple. Until now, several petitions have been filed with the Judiciary of India, seeking to restore the mausoleum into the previous Hindu shrine named Tejo Mahalay. Owing to the lack of evidence in the annals of mainstream Indian history, the argument has not spread out of the frying pan into the fire. However, churches are making way for temples in the United States.

A 30-year-old church in the US state of Virginia has been converted into a new Swaminarayan Temple in Chesapeake near Portsmouth, VA. The church was bought for $1.6 million in 2018 by Swaminarayan Gadi Sansthan in Ahmadabad, India. The church was an 18,000-sq-ft edifice on a sprawling plot of five acres, with a spacious parking plot for 150 four wheelers in Chesapeake.

The Shree Swaminarayan Mandir in Chesapeake, Virginia had its grand opening ceremony from July 19 to July 21. Holy prayers, devotional music, classical dance performance and hymns complemented the inauguration ceremony. A peace procession attended by Indian Americans, under the supervision of Acharya Shree Purushottampriyadasji Swamishree Maharaj, followed the inauguration of the Shree Swaminarayan Mandir in Chesapeake, VA.

The Portsmouth church in Virginia is not the first such establishment to be converted into a temple in the United States. Churches in Los Angeles, Louisville, Pennsylvania and Ohio have been turned into Swaminarayan temples in the USA. The United Kingdom is not an exception to the conversion of churches into temples. Two churches – one in London and one in Bolton near Manchester – have made way for temples in the UK.

In 2017, a neglected church in Edison, New Jersey was acquired to make way for an Udupi Krishna temple. Though the main building of the church was not demolished, an architectural refurbishment was made to lend it the look and feel of a Hindu temple before an idol of Lord Krishna was ceremonially consecrated there. Today, the Udupi Krishna temple stands tall on the sprawling plot of 4.5 acres, which includes a parking lot for 600 cars, in Edison, New Jersey. As many as 1000 devotees could be accommodated, at a time, for prayers inside the temple. The Udupi matt authorities cited the shortage of vacant plots as the main reason for the purchase of an abandoned church to make way for a new temple.

Also Check: All You Need to Know about New Sai Temple Canteen in New England

Churches in the United States are making way not only for temples but also restaurants and pubs. Several media reports reveal that the total number of churches in the US has been reduced to less than a half till date. Currently, 80% of the 250,000 Protestant churches in the US are either non-functional or abandoned. Nearly 4000 people stopped going to the church every other day, according to various sources. Even Catholic churches in the United States are almost on the verge of being declined in numbers. The younger generation’s religious indifference, declining attendance and high maintenance costs are some of the reasons why churches in the United States are facing closure.

A similar fate is awaiting many Hindu temples in North America, according to Jay Srinivasan, the admin of ‘IACUS’ group for Indian Americans on Facebook and a resident of Boston. He doubts that the day is not far when Indian American communities will be required to adopt temples in the US, just as Indian government approached corporates and celebs to adopt centuries-old monuments for regular maintenance.

He opines, “Most of the Indian American kids do not believe in temple rituals. Only a small percentage (perhaps, less than 10%) of the second-generation Indian American kids go to a temple regularly, which is not more than once a month. The remaining 90% don’t.” He said uninhibitedly, “All my 3 adult daughters have donated ZERO dollars to temples since they turned 18. Most probably, they went to the temple once in the past 12 years.”

“Most of the Hindu temples in North America are mired in debts. They are competing for donation with each other. A major source of revenue for Hindu temples in USA is new immigrants from India, including H1B workers. Added to the mounting issue are priests building their own private temples all over the country. In Boston alone, there are more than two private temples, the funds of which go to the priests who own them. Atop that, many software professionals are eating into revenues for temples by having turned to the priestly profession. They work in the IT corridor at daytime, and perform wedding rituals on weekends,” said Jay Srinivasan in no uncertain terms.

The crux of his arguments is that Indians in North America should stop building new temples in order to let the existing ones survive.

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