Intel Science awards
By Techgirl

I have studied and lived in USA for a short while and what strikes you is how their VC and tech industry are geared towards rewarding the best and brightest.  Lateral thinkers and risk takes are backed resulting in all manner of successes including the best search engine and the best micro blogging platform.  Ironically, this capitalist society also drives much of the free and open source movement around the world. Add Wikipedia to this list of successes and you know that America will continue its leadership position in tech for many decades.

So, I wasn’t really surprised when tech giant Intel announced the 10 winners of its Intel Science Talent Search 2011 which is described as ‘encouraging America’s future leaders to satisfy their endless curiosity by exploring how the world works and developing solutions for global challenges’.  The Winners received $630,000 in awards with the top winner, Evan O’Dorney, receiving $100,000 from the Intel Foundation.

Evan O’Dorney from California is only 17, and won the top award of $100,000 from the Intel Foundation for his mathematical project in which he compared two ways to estimate the square root of an integer. Evan discovered precisely when the faster way would work. As a byproduct of Evan's research he solved other equations useful for encrypting data. This furthered an interest he developed as early as age 2, when he was checking math textbooks out of the library.

The second place and $75,000 was won by a 17-year old blind girl Michelle Hackman, who studied the effect of separating teenagers from their cell phones. In her personal life, Michelle, who is not sighted, launched a rural secondary school in Cambodia that benefits girls confronted with significant gender violence and sex trafficking.

This prize of $75,000 for Michelle shows how America leads the rest of the world in rewarding original ideas, talent and merit.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog techgirltalk.blogspot.com.  Techgirl has been ejected from Twitter for satirizing an Indian Minister.  Her satire blog has links to her Times of India interview detailing her being kicked out of Twitter, and then being invited back.