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CARMEL -- A senior from Carmel High School is one of 40 finalists vying for over $1 million in awards at the 75th annual Intel Science Talent Contest.
Seventeen-year-old Sreya Vemuri entered this year’s research based science competition after hearing about it from friends. Vemuri, who is the only finalist from Indiana, says her idea started to take shape after working with an IUPUI physics professor who gave her a paper about parity and time symmetry, a topic in theoretical quantum mechanics.
"That was very fascinating to me. I was reading the paper and there were just so many questions that I could see that needed to be answered," Vemuri said.
Questions that lead to her project entitled "The Effect of Time Dependent Gain and Loss in a PT Symmetrical Wave Guide Array."
"Basically how light travels through wave-guides which are a special kind of channel," explained Vemuri.
She says the research could be used in the development of optical communications or lasers.
The finals are being held this week in Washington D.C. where three prizes of $150,000 will be handed out. Vemuri says if she wins a top award it’ll go towards college.
More than 1,500 students, from 38 schools across the country, entered the competition.
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