Ravi Jagadeesan to be Awarded $50,000 as a 2014 Davidson Fellow Laureate
Twenty bright young people named as 2014 Davidson Fellows exemplify the extraordinary work that can be accomplished by U.S. students who are given opportunities to excel. One of these gifted students is 18-year-old Ravi Jagadeesan of Naperville, Ill.
Ravi won a $50,000 scholarship for a mathematics project that advances the understanding of the mysterious relationship between different mathematical structures. His project, “A New Galois Invariant of Dessins d’Enfants,” studies the symmetries and the solutions of polynomial equations with rational coefficients. Ravi was able to prove that certain previously known invariants for the action of the symmetries are weak and advances the
understanding of the mysterious relationship between different mathematical structures.
Ravi grew up in Naperville and is a freshman at Harvard University. Upon graduation he hopes to be a researcher in mathematics, economics or science.
The Davidson Fellows Scholarship program offers $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 college scholarships to students 18 or younger, who have created significant projects that have the potential to benefit society in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature, philosophy, music and outside the box. The Davidson Fellows Scholarship has provided more than $5.8 million in scholarship funds to 246 Fellows since its inception in 2001, and has been named one of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarships by U.S. News & World Report. It is a program of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Reno, Nev. that supports profoundly gifted youth.
“The Davidson Institute is built on the belief that individuals, who have extraordinary intelligence and talents, when encouraged and supported, can improve the quality of life for us all,” said Bob Davidson, co-founder of the Davidson Institute. “We are delighted to recognize this group of resourceful and distinguished young people for their fascinating projects – projects that have the potential to benefit society.”
The 2014 Davidson Fellows will be honored at a reception in Washington, D.C., on September 26, 2014. Producing highly-qualified professionals, including scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs is critical to economic development in the United States. Public discourse on our nation’s competitiveness tends to focus on the needs of low-performing students. As important to our country’s future success are the most capable of students, such as the 2014 Davidson Fellows, who are reaching high levels of academic and innovative excellence, and are strong examples of what students can achieve with the proper support.
About the Davidson Institute
Founded by Bob and Jan Davidson in 1999, the Davidson Institute for Talent Development recognizes, nurtures and supports profoundly intelligent young people, and provides opportunities for them to develop their talents to make a positive difference. The Institute offers support through a number of programs and services, including the 2014 Davidson Fellows .
Davidson Fellows and The Davidson Academy of Nevada. For more information about the 2014 Davidson
Fellows, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org/Fellows.
2014 Davidson Fellow Laureates
$50,000 Scholarships
• Mr. Ravi Jagadeesan, 18, Naperville, Ill.; A New Galois Invariant of Dessins d’Enfants
• Miss Sara Kornfeld Simpson, 17, San Diego; Neuronal Nonlinear Dynamics: From an Optical Illusion to
Parkinson’s Disease
• Mr. Ray Ushikubo, 13, Riverside, Calif.; Circle of Life in Music
• Miss Alice Zhai, 16, La Canada, Calif.; Dependency of U.S. Hurricane Loss on Maximum Wind Speed and
Storm Size
2014 Davidson Fellows
$25,000 Scholarships
• Mr. Eric Chen, 18, San Diego; Computer-Aided Discovery of Novel Anti-Flu Drug Candidates to Fight
Pandemics
• Mr. Neil Davey, 18, Gaithersburg, Md.; Early Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Through the Detection of
Circulating Tumor Cells Using Drop-Based Microfluidics
• Miss Valerie Ding, 17, Portland, Ore.; Novel Next-Generation Multijunction Quantum Dot Solar Panel
Designs Using Monte Carlo Based Modeling
• Miss Alexandra LaGrassa, 17, Douglastown, N.Y.; Using Ligands to Control the Growth of Cadmium
Selenide Clusters
• Mr. Ritesh Ragavender, 17, Kendall Park, N.J.; Odd Dunkl Operators and nilHecke Algebras
• Mr. Kenneth Shinozuka, 15, New York; Wearable Sensors: A Novel Healthcare Solution for the Aging
Society
• Miss Elana Simon, 18, New York; New Diagnostics and Therapeutics for a Pediatric Liver Cancer:
Transcriptome and Whole Genome Sequencing Reveals Oncogenes and Novel Chimeric Protein Kinase in Ten
out of Ten Patients
• Miss Emily Wang, 18, Palo Alto, Calif.; Illuminating Disease Pathways: Developing Bright Fluorescent
Proteins to Improve FRET Biosensing
$10,000 Scholarships
• Miss Sofia Bramante, 17, Fairfield, Conn.; Fabrication of a Flexible, Tunable Color Changing Skin Using
Magnetically Responsive Fe304 Photonic Crystal Structures
• Miss Isabel DeBre, 17, Los Angeles; The Problem of Representation: Refugee Trauma in Postcolonial
African Fiction
• Miss Smriti Kanangat, 17, Hinsdale, Ill.; Detection of Soluble Human Histocompatibility Antigens (HLA) in
Circulation-Potential Biomarkers for Early Detection of Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma (NSCLC)
• Miss Tuong-Phi Le, 18, Houston; Shadow and Song: Revitalizing the Expatriate Vietnamese Identity Through
Mythological Media
• Mr. Kevin Lee, 17, Irvine, Calif.; Strongly Coupled Electromechanical Modeling of the Heart in Moving
Domains Using the Phase-Field Method
• Mr. Michael Parsons, 18, Long Hill, N.J.; Composition as Architecture
• Mr. Josh Wolf, 18, Elk River, Minn.; Shocking Lipid Production: Oil Extraction by Novel Electrical
Stimulation of Botryococcus braunii
• Miss Romi Yount, 16, San Francisco; Music without Borders: Transcending Cultural and Temporal
Boundaries Through Guzheng Performance