Washington: If you want to see why folks of Indian-origin – NRIs, PIOs, ABCDs, call them what you will – are hitting the high spots in academic achievement and entrepreneurial excellence, the Science Fair that President Obama is hosting at the White House on Wednesday provides a fair clue.

Nearly a third of the projects, demos, and experiments in the jamboree involve kids of Indian-origin, and they provide a window into how this ethnic group, along with other Asian-Americans, has come to dominate school-level STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) competitions, including events hosted by companies such as Intel, Google, and Westinghouse. The White House bash is now the acme of high-school STEM endeavors.

None of this should be new to President Obama, whose frequent hosting of such STEM galas in the White House has seen a fair sprinkling of Indian-American honorees, from his recognition of Stanford’s Pune-born Tom Kailath with the Presidential Medal for Science, to his schmoozing with high-schoolers Shree Bose and Anand Srinivasan, who went on to Harvard and MIT respectively. He just seems to love it, and ahead of what will be the sixth and final science fair he will be hosting for school grads, he explained his motivation as follows: “If you win the NCAA (sports) championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you’re a young person and you produce the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too.”

Few students take this challenge – and invitation – more seriously than Indian-Americans, most of them children of parents who are themselves steeped in STEM. This year’s finalists who will be at the White House includes Yashaswini Makaram, 17, of Massachusetts, who has created a new cell phone security tool that records the distinctive arm and hand motions people use to lift a cell phone from a table to uniquely identify the cell phone’s owner. To date, the technology correctly identifies a cell phone’s owner 85 per cent of the time and differentiates among people with 93 percent accuracy. Yashaswini’s biometric research, which was recognized as part of the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search, may lead to greater personalization of mobile devices, according to a White House factsheet.

Eighteen-year old Sanjana Rane from Kentucky has helped discover how a particular protein could be used to detect and treat renal fibrosis. Sanjana first became interested in pursuing medical research when she read a USA Today study ranking Louisville, her hometown, as having some of the worst air quality in the United States. She began to look into the dangers of air pollution and learned about the chemical acrolein, which is found in both cigarette and industrial smoke and can cause kidney damage. She worked on how to shift acrolein’s influence on the kidneys by using a particular protein as a therapeutic target, winning a scholarship at the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology for her effort.

At least two projects demo-ing in the White House had their origins from student experiences in India. The sight of children in India drinking dirty, unsafe water led New Hampshire’s Deepika Kurup to work on solar-powered technology to rapidly remove bacteria from water, making her a finalist in the 2015 Google Science Fair and a winner of the National Geographic Explorer Award. Anurudh Ganesan, now 16, recalls how his grandparents walked him 10 miles to a remote clinic in India in order to receive a vaccination and they arrived, the vaccines were ineffective due to the high temperatures and lack of refrigeration. Now living in Maryland, Anurudh worked on exploring ways of refrigerating vaccines immediately prior to use, particularly in developing countries. His creation, VAXXWAGON, can effectively transport vaccines in the last leg of distribution without the use of ice and electricity, saving potentially thousands of lives throughout the world.

Some of the projects also involve frugal engineering. Astounded at the price of diagnostic spirometers – machines used to analyze lung health by having patients blow into them – San Jose, California high schooler Maya Varma developed a 3D printed version that costs a mere $35. Maya’s (literally) breathtaking invention earned her a slot as a 2016 Intel STS finalist, where her spirometer was selected as one of the top 40 projects in the nation.

Obama has been an alarmist about the purported decline of STEM studies in the US, but also a cheerleader for restoring American primacy in the field. “As a society, we have to celebrate outstanding work by young people in science at least as much as we do Super Bowl winners,” he said at one previous White House Science Fair. “Because superstar biologists and engineers and rocket scientists and robot-builders — they’re what’s going to transform our society. They’re the folks who are going to come up with cures for diseases and new sources of energy, and help us build healthier, more successful societies.” Indian-American kids have heard him loud and clear.

The White House factsheet also gives a shout-out to Infosys Foundation and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) among many institutions and companies that are promoting computer science education in the US.

(Source: The Times of India)