Washington DC ( US) October 27 2017: Indian AmericanMeghna Behari,  is among the four grand prize winners at the 2017 Broadcom MASTERS competition, according to an announcement of , the Broadcom Foundation and Society for Science and the Public..
Behari, 14 years , of Sewickley, Pa., won the $10,000 Marconi/Samueli Award for Innovation. for developing Aquabot, an automated testing device that can wirelessly collect and transmit data on water quality. She was motivated to develop the product after she learned that current water testing methods proved inefficient. A total of 30 finalists  came to Washington, D.C., for the national round of the math, applied science, technology and engineering for rising stars competition. The group of finalists included at least seven Indian American and South Asian American middle school students, reports IndiaWest
Pujita Tangirala of Los Gatos, Calif., was the top winner of the science award. Tangirala won for the project, "A Green, Low-Cost Adsorbent for the Removal of Dye from Aqueous Solutions."
Mithra Karamchedu of Portland, Ore., was named among the rising stars of the competition. Karamchedu was selected for the project, "Remote Sensing the Ablation or Accumulation of a Glacier by Using Fractal Analysis on Glacier Images."
Arjun Moorthy was named the Scott A. McGregor Leadership Award recipient, selected by the finalists who named one student from the group based on their leadership abilities to represent their class as a speaker at the awards ceremony. Moorthy was also a member of the team award, as was Karamchedu.
“I often hear about high levels of contamination in waterways very close to my home,” said Behari about her project. “Globally, the lack of clean water poses a significant problem,” she added, so she set out to develop a method that would be simpler for both scientists and concerned citizens. That led to her platform, “Aquabot,” which is an automated testing device that can be controlled wirelessly.
Broadcom MASTERS, a programme founded and produced by the Society for Science & the Public, seeks to inspire young scientists, engineers and innovators who will solve the grand challenges of the future.