Achievers
Books
Business
Calender
Community
Controversy
Cuisine
Eateries
Education
Enterprise
Faith
Good Samaritans
Health
Infotech
Media
Memories
Movies
News Archives
Opinion
Specials
The Arts

Three Indians vie for top Intel prizes

R S Shankar

When his friends and classmates were busy hiking, visiting friends and relatives, or catching up with the latest Hollywood movies, Dilip Bobby Biswal was designing an experiment that would keep him busy in the lab through evenings and weekends, through summer and fall.

After nearly six months of work, he sent off the results to the Intel Science Talent Search -- considered by many to be the premier precollege science competition in the country.

He thought that was the end of his experiment, and that he would not hear from Intel. But within a few weeks, he was among the 300 young men and women selected for the first place. This month Biswal, 18, of San Ramon, California, will know if his experiment will get him the first prize. He is among three Indian Americans who are now in Washington soon for the final competition. In all, there are 40 competitors.

Biswal's research deals in part with chromosomes, the gene carriers of cells, and it could have implications for gene therapies to reduce the deterioration of human cells. It could help find cures for arthritis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and heart diseases.

Biswal says he became interested in what regulates the life and death of cells after a lecture he attended on the subject at Monte Vista High School in Danville, where he is a senior. His experiments set out to uncover the relationship between the end segments of chromosomes, called telomeres, and the life span of cells. He did much of his research on the Internet. The area that Biswal worked on involved the link between telomeres and cell lifespan. Further research is this area could benefit medicine and affect longevity.

Biswal, who has won a number of awards for his academic achievements, credits his father, Madan Biswal, an electronic engineer, for his lifelong interest in science. He hopes to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology or Stanford University.

At the awards ceremony to be held in Washington, DC, the top prize will be a $ 100,000 four-year scholarship. In addition to the scholarship increase, Intel will also give each STS finalist a high-performance Pentium(r) III processor-based laptop computer. The second place finalist will receive a $ 75,000 scholarship and the third-prize winner will go home with a $ 50,000 award. Fourth- through sixth-place finalists each receive $ 25,000; seventh through tenth prize winners will receive $ 20,000. The remaining 30 finalists will receive a $ 5,000 scholarship award.

Intel recently took over the program, formerly known as Westinghouse Scholarships. The largest chipmaker in the world, Intel has created several new categories and increased the program's yearly budget from $ 330,000 to $ 1.2 million a year last year. The announcement includes the addition of two new categories of awards for semifinalists and schools and a significant increase in scholarship awards for the 40 finalists. Total awards for the Intel STS have increased by $ 1 million since 1998 when Intel became the sponsor of the prestigious pre-college science competition.

Biswal is the kind of student who comes along perhaps once or twice in a teacher's career, said his biology teacher, Patti Carothers, who advised him on the project. He has intellect, curiosity and persistence, she said in an interview.

"He truly has the power to make history,"' Carothers told the local media. "I really think we're going to hear more about him later.... The thing about Bobby is he can see in the future. He sees future applications of things."

Another student, Beeneet Kothari, 17, of Deer Park, submitted to the Intel STS a mathematics project designed to improve current understanding of the HIV virus and T cell dynamics.

Combining his three loves -- mathematics, biology and computer science -- he created a mathematical model incorporating the effects of apoptosis (programmed cell death), anti-apoptotic drug therapy, viral mutation and viral reservoirs.

According to Intel, he concluded that administering anti-apoptotic drugs in conjunction with others in a cocktail improves the patient's condition during therapy and, more importantly, when the patient is removed from it. At Half Hollow Hills High School West in Dix Hills, he is president of the National Honor Society, the Science Olympiad team, the Science Explorers Club, and the Brainstormers Academic Quiz Bowl Team.

Multilingual, Kothari writes and speaks Spanish. He plays varsity tennis and serves as a peer tutor in math, science and history. He has received numerous academic awards and his El Niņo web site has earned distinction in the press and in competition. The son of Navneet and Beena Kothari, Beeneet hopes to attend MIT.

Priyanka Agarwal, 17, of Fort Worth, researched cellular causes of glaucoma for her Intel STS project in medicine. She isolated a permanent, transformed rat retinal ganglion cell culture to study how the eye's retinal cells die. The death of retinal ganglion cells, also by apoptosis, damages the optic nerve and prevents connections with the brain required for sight. The result is blindness.

According to Intel, Priyanka's cell line is thought to be the first in vitro model available to researchers developing new treatments for glaucoma. (Previous glaucoma research focused on in vivo animal models of the disease because no permanent in vitro models existed.) Last summer, expanding her interest in cellular research, she began an independent study of cardiovascular diseases.

At the Texas Academy of Math & Science in Denton, Priyanka is active in the key club and on the judicial board and has won several speaking and debating awards. Born in India, she enjoys playing the violin and the flute, reading and Indian classical dance. Priyanka, the daughter of Dr Neeraj and Rajnee Agarwal, wants to earn a doctorate from Stanford.

Next: Mother pleads not guilty in drowning case

Tell us what you think of this report