Sahithi Pingali

BENGALURU: Now one can dot that planet in the name of Sahithi Pingali, a Grade 12 student from city’s Inventure Academy. She will be sharing the space with other luminaries in the Milky Way by having a minor planet named after her. This milestone is part of her winning streak at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) in Los Angeles, where she has been on a roll.

Earlier this month at ISWEEEP (The International Sustainable World Engineering Energy Environment Project) Olympiad held in Houston, Texas, Sahithi won the Gold Medal for her research on 'An Innovative Crowdsourcing Approach to Monitoring Freshwater Bodies' which was based on city lakes. She has also researched on Varthur lake with her school team especially.

The Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which has the right to name minor planets, decided to name a planet after her.

At the INTEL ISEF international finals, she won 3 special awards in addition to placing overall second in the category Earth and Environmental Sciences which included The ASU Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives Special Award; A Special Award from King Abdul Aziz and his Companions for Giftedness and Creativity and US Agency for International Development Special Award

Sahithi, after her winning her Gold Medal at ISWEEEP, said, “The interesting thing about my project is that it’s all about crowdsourcing; getting students and citizens to contribute scientific data. OLOV was the inspiration for this – it was the dedication and commitment of my team members at Inventure that convinced me that high school students were capable of gathering such reliable data, while increasing their environmental awareness and knowledge of science. I hope students all over Bangalore will take this as a call for action to adopt lakes and lead the way for the rest of the world.”

Sahithi was first exposed to the impact of development on Bangalore’s lifeline - our network of lakes - in July 2015, when she won a scholarship from Inventure to participate in the American India Foundation (AIF) program, to study the impact of urban development on scarce resources. Sahithi was also part of the Inventure team that participated in the Our Lakes Our Voice (OLOV) (an Inventure Change Maker initiative) aimed at students from AIF and Inventure doing an experiential case study on Varthur Lake, a 450-acre water body in Inventure’s vicinity.

She is currently pursuing an internship at the University of Michigan, where she's working with PhD students and professors in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.



In Video: Minor planet will be named after Bengaluru student