3 Indian Americans to be finalists in 3M Scientist Challenge

Three Indian Americans are listed among the final 10 budding student scientists from across the country who will begin a unique summer mentorship program with a 3M scientist in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge.

The finalists are : Anish Chaluvadi (14yrs) from Langston Charter Middle School (Grade VIII), Srijay Kasturi (12yrs) homeschooled student (Grade VII) and Aishani Sil (12yrs) from Rice Middle School (Grade VII).

Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge is one of the nation's premier science competitions for students in grades V to VIII.

These 3 students have displayed top scientific ingenuity and inventive thinking and will now move forward into the next round to develop their idea from a concept into an actual prototype, with support from their 3M mentors.

At the end of the summer, students will travel to the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minn., to present their final solutions to a panel of judges. The winning young scientist will win $25,000, a trip from Discovery Student Adventures, and the title of "America's Top Young Scientist."

Anish Chaluvadi enjoys playing music, but also finds time for Lego Robotics in his free time, having won the Science Innovation Award at the World Lego Robotics Tournament in Florida in 2012. He eventually wants to become a biomedical engineer because he enjoys overcoming challenges and excels at math and science.

Srijay Kasturi enjoys working on web programming, writing code and building hardware. He is also interested in film-making and often uses FanFiction to help him learn how to tell a story to others.