Obama praises work of Indian American teen scientists

March 24, 2015 02:09 am | Updated 02:09 am IST - Washington:

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday praised the work of a budding Indian American teenage scientist who used machine learning to teach a computer to identify potential drugs for cancer, tuberculosis and Ebola.

Anvita Gupta, 17, of Scottsdale, Arizona, winner of Third Place Medal of Distinction for Global Good, was one of the participants of the fifth White House Science Fair which was attended by several other Indian-origin teenagers — Trisha Prabhu from Illinois, Sahil Doshi from Pittsburgh, Nikhil Behari from Pennsylvania and Ruchi Pandya from San Jose.

When Gupta explained how she had used an algorithm to help identify possible new drugs to treat Ebola, cancer and tuberculosis, Mr. Obama turned to the press, grinned and said, “I don’t know what you all have been doing. But this is what she has been doing.” “It is unbelievable what so many of these young people have accomplished at such an early age,” Mr. Obama said.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.