73 Indian-American teens among Intel science talent semi-finalists

As many as 73 Indian-Americans figure among 300 high school seniors named semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search 2015, America's oldest and most prestigious pre-college science and math competition.

The contest is designed to reward young scientists and to recognize the richness of how they contribute to improving and enriching everyday life.

Each semifinalist receives a $1,000 award from the Intel Foundation with an additional $1,000 going to his or her school, resulting in $600,000 in total semifinalist awards.

Semifinalists were selected from more than 1,800 entrants hailing from 460 high schools in 41 states, Puerto Rico, and five American and international high schools overseas.

On Jan 21, 40 of the 300 semifinalists will be named Intel Science Talent Search finalists. Finalists will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, DC from March 5-11, where they will compete for more than $1 million in awards.

Here are the Indian-American semifinalists listed according to the state:

Alabama: Viswajit Venkata Macha and Ruchir Rastogi; Arizona: Anvita Gupta;

California: Tanay Tandon, Rohan Choudhury, Aunoy Poddar, Rohan Anand Savoor, Vaishavi Shrivastava, Kriti Lall, Saumya Keremane, Shreya Ramayya, Karthik Raju, Prem Talwai, Somya Khare, Nidhi A. Navaratna, Ruchi Pandya, Shikhar Dixit, Rohith Kuditipudi, Neil Movva, Pranav Gudipally Reddy, Anokhi Saklecha, Nikash Shankar, Sriram Somasundaram, Kailas Vodrahalli, Saranesh Prembabu, Neel Bedekar, and Agastya Gupta;

Indiana: Puneeth Naga Sai Krishna Meruva and Priya Mirmira;

Maryland: Atman Panigrahi, Umesh Janak Padia, Matthew D. Das Sarma, Sachin Pandey, and Ishaan Manish Parikh;

Massachusetts: Tejasv Arya, Abhinav Sai Venigalla, Kavish Gandhi, and Ayush Kumar;

Michigan: Naveen Jasti,Aditya Mukundan and Vipul A Nandigala;

Minnesota: Rahul Parhi;

Nebraska: Pranav Subramaniam;

New Jersey: Eswar Anandapadmanaban, and Ananya Joshi;

New York: Ankit Singh Baghel, Farzana Khan, Ariana Gopal, Monika Dharia, Muhammad Mujtaba Ali, Jay Khurana, Abhinav Arunabh Talwar, Brinda Ramesh, Burhan Azeem, Ridoy Majumdar, Divji Sharma and Pavithran T. Ravindran;

North Carolina: Uday Uppal;

Ohio: Aswin Bikkani;

Oregon: Anika Raghuvanshi;

Pennsylvania: Kevin Biju;

Texas: Souvik Banerjee, Sunand Iyer, Perry Alagappan, Ria Chhabra, Ahneesh Jayant Mohanty and Raj Munavar Sajjath;

Virginia: Pooja Chandrashekar, and Shreya Nandi;

Washington: Reesab Pathak and Shanta Katipamula;

Wisconsin: Dhaivat Nitin Pandya.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)