Palo Alto Teen in Washington for Competition

The 2013 Intel Science Talent Search is underway in Washington, D.C. where teens are competing for $630,000 in scholarship money. The top prize is $100,000.

The 40 participants are judged on their original scientific research, achievement and leadership. The winners will be announced at a black-tie gala awards ceremony at the National Building Museum on Tuesday.

Among the competitors is Sahana Vasudevan of Palo Alto. Her bio is below:

Sahana Vasudevan, 16, of Palo Alto, entered an Intel Science Talent Search project in mathematicsthat proves a new, generalized way to minimize carries. Carries are important in arithmetic; for example 7 + 6 = 3 with a carry of 1. In computing, the carry is usually handled by a "carry bit," so reducing carries decreases computational load. With the usual choice of digits, one is forced to carry about half the time, but previous work had shown that in odd prime bases, digits could be chosen so that the probability of a carry is reduced to 25 percent and that no further reduction is possible. Sahanageneralized this result to mathematical structures called "groups" and proved that, in this general case, the set of digits must satisfy a certain necessary condition for the probability of a carry to be less than 25 percent. Sahana is fluent in Tamil, her first language, and is an award-winning Carnatic (South Indian Classical) vocalist and violinist, having honed her singing talents since she was four and played violin since age seven. Last summer, she performed on a Carnatic music concert tour in India. Sahana is a student at Gnyanam Academy (Homeschool) and is the daughter of Jayaraman Vasudevan and Vanaja Narayanaswamy.

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