Meet Sahithi Pingali, a Class 12 Bengaluru student who has just got a planet named after her.
But this didn’t come as easy as it sounds as Sahithi had to excel in the world’s largest pre-college science competition called the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) to join an elite league of people to get a minor planet in the Milky Way named after them.
The research paper detailed Sahithi’s work in developing a data crowdsourcing system for her research.
It tapped into concerned people willing to obtain data for her research into the water pollution in the city.
The Lincoln Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) holds the rights to name minor planets.
In total, the entire Indian team at ISEF won 21 awards, but Sahithi got the best prize by far – a minor planet in the Milky Way bearing her name.
“I definitely didn’t see this coming.
“I want to make it more accurate and expand it to detect arsenic,” she said.
Earlier this year, she got a Gold Medal at ISWEEEP (The International Sustainable World Engineering Energy Environment Project) Olympiad at Houston (U.S.) for her work on Varthur Lake.
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