Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS) is the oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition in the United States. It encourages students to tackle challenging scientific questions and develop the skills necessary to solve the problems of tomorrow. Each year, 300 semifinalists are selected from a pool of approximately 1,700 applicants from across the nation to compete for $1.25 million in scholarships and awards.
Akhil Mathew of Madison, New Jersey, promoting the sciences and mathematics is a life ambition. "It seems doing that would be necessary to address many of the world's current problems," says the 18-year-old Intel Science Talent Search finalist, who entered a project in mathematics.
Akhil was born in India to Thomas and Rama Madhavarao, but he has spent most of his life in New Jersey. According to Intel, Akhil combines algebraic geometry, representation theory and category theory in his work on Deligne categories of complex rank. Deligne created a large family of categories parametrised by complex numbers which interpolate classical categories, ones in which the complex number in question is a positive integer. In his project, Akhil showed that under certain finiteness assumptions important properties of these categories are determined by constructible sets. He then showed that these properties hold generically if they hold on a sufficiently large set of parameters.
Akhil is a tutor in chemistry, math and French at Madison High School, where he is also active in the chess club. Since eighth grade, he has taken courses at Drew University, where he recently assisted in preparing a math textbook for publication.
He is moderator of an online Johns Hopkins University math forum. "I play tennis casually and volunteer at the public library as a chess teacher for elementary school students," he adds.
He says his former mentor and current teacher Sinan Gunturk of New York University taught him a great deal about analysis and got him seriously interested in mathematical research. Akhil hopes to continue his studies at Harvard or MIT.
"I am very glad to have received the finalist award," he says, "and look forward to presenting my work in Washington, DC."
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