Indian-American Indrani Das is a winner! At 17, she won the Regeneron Science Talent Search competition in the United States for her research on treating brain injury and disease. The oldest science competition in the world for students, it is dubbed as the ‘Junior Nobel Prize’. With it she won a prize money of $2,50,000. Indrani hails from New Jersey. She was recognised by the committee comprising some of the top experts in the field of science and technology,
Through her project, Das discovered a way of increasing the survival rate of neurons affected by injury or degenerative disease in the brain. She conducted her work on astrogliosis. This is a condition that occurs when astrocytes, which are a form of cells, start increasing at an abnormal rate because of certain form of injuries or trauma like infection, stroke and so on. Excess of astrocytes leads to the destruction of neurons. Through her work, Indrani was able to demonstrate how the survival of neurons can be ensured in such cases.
Path breaking
“Neurons are dying around these supporting cells, and at the same time there is more of this glutamate in the environment,” Das explained. She said she wanted brain injury to be tackled at a fundamental level, especially when it involved injury by Alzheimer’s, or neuro-degeneration and traumatic brain injury. “I want to see all the people who suffer from these conditions to improve their quality of life,” she said.
George D. Yancopoulos, who is the president and the Chief Scientific Officer of Regeneron, and a winner of the Regeneron Science Talent Search in 1976, is the founding scientist of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, the competition’s sponsor. Applauding the efforts of the participants, he said, “My experience as a Science Talent Search winner led me to embark on a career in science, and I hope it will inspire these exceptional young scientists to become next generation of innovators that will improve the world and solve some of our most pressing challenges as society. We need kids, the best and the brightest, to become scientists. Why? Because we are literally in a war for survival as a species. We have got to be inspiring, we’ve got to be capturing their imagination, and we’ve got to convince them and they have to come in here and help save our world.”
When she’s not winning laurels and contributing to the field of science, Indrani spends time playing the piccolo trumpet in a jazz band, and mentoring younger students in math and science.
