By Khalida Sarwari
Lynbrook High School students David Liu and Raman Nelakanti returned to school today after a weeklong trip to Washington, D.C., as two of 40 finalists who competed in the Intel Science Talent Search.
For Liu and Nelakanti, the esteemed national science competition is just the beginning of a lifelong career in the sciences.
Liu, an 18-year-old from Saratoga, placed second in the competition and took home $75,000. Nelakanti, a 17-year-old from San Jose, went home with $7,500.
Nelakanti and Liu were chosen out of six Lynbrook students that entered, science teacher and research coordinator of the school’s science fair program Amanda Alonzo said.
Both are seniors at Lynbrook and members of an academic research program headed by Alonzo.
Alonzo, who accompanied Liu and Nelakanti on the trip, praised their achievements.
“I think they’re going to move on to great accomplishments,” Alonzo said. “I have confidence both are going to stay in science, technology and math. This is going to be a blip on their resume.”
Nelakanti said his passion is the study of biotechnology or “using biological systems to solve engineering problems.”
“It’s mainly the problem solving,” he said. “I really like solving something that’s applicable to life. I’m trying to see what kind of questions I can ask and how I can solve a piece of the problem.”
Nelakanti started researching ideas for his project in January 2009 and decided he wanted to find a more efficient way of producing hydrogen gas. He chose to explore algae with the goal of modifying sulfur conditions to find an optimal level of producing hydrogen, but without compromising the algae’s growth, he said.
“I was trying to use algae to produce hydrogen and I was trying to make that process more efficient because a biological process is hard to transform to an industrial application,” Nelakanti said.
Nelakanti’s interest in science was sparked in the sixth grade and since then, he has completed seven science projects. He said being selected as a finalist in the Intel competition was a reward for all the years he has been involved in science and for being a mentor to others throughout the
years.
“My experience in D.C. was something you can’t really experience many times in your life,” Nelakanti said. “It was really amazing, a great honor.”
After graduating, Nelakanti said he will study biological engineering at either Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology or Stanford University.
Liu said he, too, is considering attending Stanford University in the fall, where he wants to study computer science.
“My ultimate goal is to develop something that will change the way people use computers,” Liu said.
The project he entered in the competition indicates Liu is heading down that path.
He created a search engine that recognizes concepts based on colors and textures in photos and then automatically identifies similar images. He said he has been working on the project for the last two and a half years. The idea came to him as he was trying to organize his family photo collection, Liu said.
“You could use this to search personal photos or a new way to search images on the web,” Liu said.
He said his program has already been used by NASA Ames Research Center to detect digging equipment buried near oil pipelines using aerial images.
Liu said he was honored to be selected as the second place winner.
“I was completely surprised, but really happy,” Liu said. “I can say that every finalist there, they all really love what they’re doing. I really learned a lot just by talking to other people and getting exposed to other people’s research.”
As a 6-year-old, Liu said he wanted to make his own computer game. After his parents bought him a book about programming, he started reading tutorials online.
Both Liu and Nelakanti are planning to do an internship in their respective fields of interest after graduating this spring.
Technology giant Intel Corp. sponsors the Intel Science Talent Search each year. This was the first time that a single California school produced two finalists, according to Intel officials.
This was also the first time in the competition’s history that four finalists, one-tenth of the entire group, come from the Bay Area.
Palo Alto High School senior Lynnelle Ye, 18, finished in fourth place and received $40,000. Namrata Anand, 17, of San Jose’s Harker School, was a finalist and received $7,500.