From Spelling Bees To Math Olympiads: Indian-Origin Students Who Have Made The Nation Proud

9-year-old Indian-American schoolgirl, Preesha Chakraborty, recently figured in a list of the "world's brightest" students prepared by the prestigious Johns Hopkins Centre for Talented Youth (CTY), based on the results of above-grade-level tests of over 16,000 students across 90 countries.

PTI

But are we surprised, though?

Haven't people of Indian origin been winning all worldwide contests, from Spelling Bees to Math Olympiads?

Indian-origin students who have aced world contests

Here is a list of some of the NRIs who have aced the game in world contests:

Dev Shah, America's Spell Bee Winner 2023 (2023)

Dev Shah - a 14-year-old eighth grader from Florida - became the 2023 Spelling Bee Champion, succeeding in 14 rounds of tough-to-spell words such as "probouleutic", "zwitterion" and "schistorrhachis".

Dev Shah/ X

He ended up winning $50,000 in cash and a commemorative medal, proving himself better than 228 competitors.

Since 1999, 27 Indian Americans have consistently emerged as champions in the Spelling Bee.

Medha Gupta, Developer of Safe Travel App for Girls (2018)

Medha Gupta, a sophomore at Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, felt unsafe walking home from her school bus.

In response to this problem, she found a solution that would help not just her but all girls in general.

Medha Gupta/ India.com

Medha developed Safe Travel, an iOS app through which a person can program it to send an alert to someone they trust if they fail to arrive at a destination within a certain time.

This app made her win the annual Congressional App Challenge, where she emerged as the winner for Virginia's 10th District, beating out some 1,300 odd apps.

Shreya Ramachandran, Gloria Barron Prize Winner (2018)

Shreya Ramachandran/ nationalgeographic.org

14-year-old Shreya Ramachandran's project, The Grey Water Project, led her to emerge as a Gloria Barron Prize Winner in 2018.

Her non-profit promotes the safe reuse of grey water and water conservation as a way to address drought.

Indian-origin students help US win Math Olympiad (2015)

The US won the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) after more than 20 years, with the help of two Indian-origin students - 17-year-old Shyam Narayanan and 18-year-old Yang Liu Patil.

Credit: X

IMO is the World Championship Mathematics Competition for High School students, held annually in a different country.

Shivani Sud wins the 'Junior Nobel' (2008)

17-year-old Indian-American high school student Shivani Sud won the top prize at the Intel Science Talent Search contest in the US for her project on cancer.

Shivani Sud/ fareastgizmos.com

Dubbed the 'Junior Nobel', this prize awarded Shivani for looking at bioinformatics and genomics to identify stage-II colon cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and the best therapeutic agents for treating their tumours.

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