Washington: Three Indian-Americans have won medals at the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search for the year 2015, and alongside other winners, today they will get a chance to meet President Barack Obama at the White House. The trio, Saran Prembabu, Shashwat Kishore and Anvita Gupta won medals at the competition, however none of the three could get the top award, which has been dominated in previous years by Indian-Americans. Noah Golowich, Andrew Jin and Michael Hofmann Winer, each received the first-place award of USD 150,000 at the Intel science competition, a program of Society for Science & the Public, the organisers said. The top winners and other finalists from across the US took home awards totalling over USD 1 million.

Saranesh (Saran) Thanika Prembabu, 17, of San Ramon, California, won the Second Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation. Saran studied how varying the layers of lead titanate and strontium ruthenate in nanocrystal superlattices could affect their electrical and magnetic properties, which could be harnessed for a variety of electrical and computing applications. Shashwat Kishore, 18, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, won the Third Place Medal of Distinction for Basic Research. Shashwat's math project focused on representing abstract algebras using matrices. Anvita Gupta, 17, of Scottsdale, Arizona, won the Third Place Medal of Distinction for Global Good. Anvita used machine learning to "teach" a computer to identify potential drugs for cancer, tuberculosis and Ebola. Pre-clinical trials are already underway in China on the tuberculosis drug that she identified.