A third of America's budding science talent are of Indian origin

Nearly one-third of the 40 high school seniors named finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search 2015, America's oldest and most prestigious pre-college science and math competition, are of Indian origin.

The finalists receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, DC from March 5 to 11 to compete for more than $1 million in awards from the Intel Foundation.

Run by the Society for Science & the Public, the contest recognises the most promising young US innovators creating the technologies and solutions that will that will make people's lives better.

Intel Science Talent Search recently tripled its top award money, replacing the single $100,000 top prize with three Medal of Distinction awards of $150,000 each.

"Intel invests in engineering, math and science education to support the next generation of innovators, who will create the products and services to enrich our daily lives," said Justin Rattner, president of the Intel Foundation.

Selected from 300 semifinalists and more than 1,800 entrants, the finalists are from 36 schools in 18 states.

In the past, young innovators chosen to participate in the Science Talent Search have gone on to receive more than 100 of the world's most prestigious honours,

including eight Nobel Prizes.

The 13 Indian American finalists and their projects are:

Anandapadmanaban, Eswar, Jersey City, New Jersey; The ThereNIM: A Touch-less Respiratory Monitor.

Chemparathy, Augustine George, San Ramon, California; Accumulation of the Biodiesel Precursor Triacylglycerol Offsets Oxidative Stress in the Model Alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

D'Mello, Ryan, Lisle, Illinois; A New Result on Gaps Between Integer Points on Elliptic Curves with Coverage of Applications to Cryptography. Gupta, Anvita, Scottsdale, Arizona; Computational Drug Discovery for Cancer, Tuberculosis, and Ebola by Targeting Intrinsically Disordered Proteins.

Khare, Somya, San Jose, California; Changes in Growth Rate and Cytoskeletal Activity During the Starvation Response in E. coli. Kishore, Shashwat, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania; Multiplicity Space Signatures and Applications in Tensor Products of sl2 Representations. Kuditipudi, Rohith, San Jose, California; Network Based Integration of High Throughput Gene Expression and Methylation Data Reveals New Insights into NAFLD Progression.

Lall, Kriti, Palo Alto, California; A Novel Bacteria Strain and Bioreactor for Practical Arsenic Water Bioremediation. Pandya, Dhaivat Nitin, Appleton, Wisconsin; Minimum Cost Linear Network Coding Design for General Connections.

Pathak, Reesab, Camas, Washington; Cytomegalovirus Vaccine Vectors Induce Universal, MHC-E Restricted CD8+ T cells Against AIDS Virus. Prembabu, Saranesh, San Ramon, California; Coupled Electric and Magnetic Properties in Artificially-Layered Perovskite Thin Films. Raghuvanshi, Anika, Portland, Orlando; Logic Synthesis and a Generalized Notation for Memristor-Realized Material Implication Gates. Tandon, Tanay, Cupertino, California; Topographical Computer Vision Algorithms for Rapid, Low-cost Hematological Diagnostics and Parasite Detection Through Random Forests Classification and van Leeuwenhoek-type Imaging.

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