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Uploaded: Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 9:18 AM
Palo Alto teen places tenth in national science contest
Sahana Vasudevan, 16, takes home $20,000 in Intel Science Talent Search
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 | A Palo Alto teenager has placed tenth in a national math and science competition, taking home $20,000 in the 2013 Intel Science Talent Search.
Sixteen-year-old Sahana Vasudevan presented her mathematics project to a judging panel in Washington, D.C., over the weekend along with 39 other finalists from across the country. This year's contest initially drew 1,712 entries.
Vasudevan attended Palo Alto High School, as well as public elementary and middle school in Sunnyvale and San Jose, before switching to home-schooling two years ago when her load of Stanford University math classes created scheduling conflicts.
Her Intel project, called "Minimizing the Number of Carries in the Set of Coset Representatives of a Normal Subgroup," was based on a problem she got last year from Stanford math professor Persi Diaconis.
"One day she burst into my office and, in the nicest way, said, 'Can I ask you a question?' Diaconis recalled in an interview in January.
"I didn't know anything about her except I'd seen her in the halls and people said she was the real thing."
Vasudevan told Diaconis she was going away for the summer and needed a problem to work on.
"I took a problem I was working on but thought she could understand and explained it to her and she immediately made a generalization and then asked if it would be OK if she worked on it," Diaconis said.
"At the end of the summer she'd made a little manuscript. We'd made a lot of progress too, but what she did was completely her own work and completely original.
"We see a lot of brilliant kids, including high school kids from Paly, and Sahana seems remarkable even in the sea of brilliant kids we see at Stanford even," Diaconis said.
Vasudevan, who was born in Mountain View, spends her summers in India, where she sings and plays violin with fellow devotees of Carnatic music, a genre from Southern India.
"When I go to India I focus on music," she said in a January interview with the Weekly.
"Just like math, I've been interested in music since I was really young."
Vasudevan said it's "hard to quantify" the amount if time she spends on math, "but I do spend a lot of time doing math and on music."
She also participates in after-school math team activities at Paly under the direction of math teacher Suz Antink.
Antink called her an "enthusiastic and innovative" member of the school's Advanced Problem Solving team.
"She loves to discuss how to solve the problems as much as she enjoys finding the solution," Antink said in January.
"Discussions with Sahana are animated and lively. She smiles easily and appreciates the insights of others. She's great on team contests, too."
The first-place winner in this year's Intel contest is 17-year-old Sara Volz of Colorado Springs, Colo., who took home $100,000.
Volz used artificial selection to establish populations of algae cells with high oil content, which are essential for an economically feasible biofuel.
Other top winners were Jonah Kallenbach of Ambler, Pa., Adam Bowman of Brentwood, Tenn., Hannah Larson of Eugene, Ore., Peter Kraft of Munster, Ind., Kensen Shi of College Station, Tex., Samuel Zbarsky of Rockville, Md., Brittany Wenger of Sarasota, Fla. and Akshay Padmanabha of Collierville, Tenn.
— Chris Kenrick Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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| Comments
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Posted by parent, a resident of the Palo Verde neighborhood, on Mar 13, 2013 at 9:31 am Wow! Congratulations!
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Posted by Jared Bernstein, a resident of the Professorville neighborhood, on Mar 13, 2013 at 10:59 am Sounds like a front page story.
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Posted by Becky Sanders, a resident of the Ventura neighborhood, on Mar 13, 2013 at 11:17 am Hi there Chris Thank you for bringing us another great story. Very inspiring. Do you think Sahana and her mentors would like to come to the Media Center to do a 1/2 hour show about her work and maybe even show us some of her calculations. You could host! I'd produce. Fun stuff!
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Posted by Chrisc, a resident of the College Terrace neighborhood, on Mar 13, 2013 at 11:52 am Becky, great idea. You could contact Paly to get the offer to her. What channel would it air?
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Posted by Congrats!, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 13, 2013 at 1:48 pm Congratulations, Sahana!
Your eagerness and great attitude will take you very far.
What an inspiration to us all!
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Posted by Jeffrey J, a resident of the University South neighborhood, on Mar 13, 2013 at 2:13 pm Congratulations, Sahana!
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Posted by wuuu-t, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Mar 13, 2013 at 3:44 pm The last "teen" to place in a science test had exactly the same "research" which was the Dads research at Stanford.
All these prizes have been devalued by the gaming by parents desparate to push their kids forward.
In a world where billions upon billions push, the normal prizes are devalued for those kids who really think something up themselves.
So any prize winner is devalued by these cheaters. So I hope if this kid did it herself she will discourage the cheaters.
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Posted by Terry, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 13, 2013 at 10:53 pm Congratulations, Sahana! +1
Nice to see some refreshing news here.
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Posted by Private School Teacher, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 14, 2013 at 11:16 pm @Wuuuut, I'm not so sure you know what you're talking about.
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Posted by local mom, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 15, 2013 at 2:16 pm @wuuu-t,
It's easy to see why you think that, I assumed the same when I saw my first science fair -- but you really misunderstand the nature of these projects today. These days, students have the opportunity to work with and under the direction of adults with unique abilities and assets, at research centers or universities with resources they never had in the past, and not just in Silicon Valley. That is no longer discouraged, in fact, it's encouraged that students take advantage of opportunities around them to learn and do more challenging work. For the sake of a competition, they just have to describe the help they got, have official permission to use the resources at whatever company, university or research lab they use, and describe if their work is an extension of someone else's ongoing work or a unique stand-alone project. Judges interview the kids, they can tell if a kid really learned something or not.
This goes even for the younger students like in middle school. There's no point in restricting kids to a stale world of projects already done when they can do real work in the real world, using tools their parents couldn't even have dreamed of. Yes, that does mean kids whose dads have research projects at Stanford could piggyback on that work, but so often could other kids if they asked. Many of the teachers in the area know how to connect very motivated kids to such resources, too, as it sounds may have been the case here.
This young woman is obviously brilliant and highly motivated. Congratulations, Sahana!
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Posted by Mom, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 15, 2013 at 2:27 pm She sounds amazing. How sad that Paly would not work with her math class schedule and that she is no longer a Paly student...it is a loss for other students that she is not in their classes.
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Posted by local mom, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 15, 2013 at 3:16 pm I know other students enrolled in Stanford high school online who decided to home school. We are thinking of doing that, too.
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Posted by Raman, a resident of another community, on Mar 16, 2013 at 9:09 pm Dear Sahana
I am very happy to see this. I know that you will have an awrd when Jayaraman told me that you will be going to DC for the final phase. Please continue this Extradinory work.
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