Phillips Exeter student wins $250,000 top prize in science contest

Paul Feely, The New Hampshire Union Leader, Manchester
·2 min read

Mar. 13—A Phillips Exeter Academy student has earned the $250,000 prize in the 2024 Regeneron Science Talent Search, finishing first among 40 finalists in the nation's oldest and most prestigious science competition run by the Society for Science and held in Washington, D.C.

Achyuta Rajaram, 17, of Exeter, developed an automatic method to discover which parts of a computer model are involved in decision-making.

Contest officials said the information sheds light on what algorithms are "thinking," which can help make them more effective, fair and safe.

In machine learning, computer algorithms find patterns in data to answer practical questions. "Achyuta's research improved our ability to discover what computer models, that find patterns in images, are 'thinking' when they analyze a photo and which parts of their 'mechanical brains' are contributing to the decision making," contest officials said in a news release.

Rajaram, the son of Nivedita Chevvakula and Rajaram Ramaswamy Kumaraswamy, is co-head of the physics, chemistry and chess clubs at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Rajaram is the second Phillips Exeter Academy student in four years to take home the top prize in the Regeneron Science Talent Search.

Yunseo Kim won first place in 2021.

Alan Bu, 17, also a student at Phillips Exeter, placed 10th this year and received a $40,000 award for a math project that gave precise limits on how many spanning trees a planar graph can have. A spanning tree is the connecting point of vertices in a graph.

Bu's project connected the spanning tree counting problem to a separate problem in linear algebra, a different field of math, which he could then attack. His results shed light on the structure of planar graphs, contest officials said.

The competition, now in its 83rd year, identifies young innovators who become tomorrow's STEM leaders. The 2024 finalists demonstrated "extensive scientific knowledge through research and interviews while showcasing their commitment to addressing societal issues, passion for discovery, noteworthy leadership and community involvement." contest organizers said.

Forty finalists, including Rajaram, were honored this week during an award ceremony where more than $1.8 million was awarded to the finalists, selected from among the largest entrant pool since the 1960s.

"Congratulations to the winners of this year's Regeneron Science Talent Search," Maya Ajmera, President and CEO, Society for Science and Executive Publisher, Science News, said in a statement. "The remarkable intellect and ingenuity of these students serves as an inspiration for us all. Their groundbreaking innovations are vital in uncovering the crucial solutions we need now to address our most intractable challenges."