At Just 17, Indrani Das Bags 'Junior Nobel' Prize For Her Scientific Research

It can hardly be contested that kids these days are streets ahead of earlier generations. From social causes to scientific marvels, the youth are dazzling us in all fields. Another example arose yesterday when Indian-American student Indrani Das bagged a $250,000 prize at the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search competition.’

The 17-year old from New Jersey was working on research in the field of treating brain injuries and diseases. The actual research gets a little complicated so try to keep up. Her work examined the death rate of neurons and how to increase their survival. A huge contributor to neuron death is astrogliosis, a phenomenon which occurs when astrocyte cells react to injury by growing, dividing and taking on less glutamate which could be fatal to neurons. Her laboratory model proved that exosomes isolated from astrocytes transfected with microRNA-124a both improved astrocyte uptake of glutamate and increased neuron survival. Hope you got all that.

The win was made all the more notable by the reputation of the competition itself. It’s the oldest student science competition the US has to offer and is also nicknamed the ‘Junior Nobel’, probably because 12 of the contests alumni have gone on to win actual Nobel Prizes.

While she took the gold, hers wasn’t the only Indian representation on the podium. Third place went to Arjun Ramnani for his work in combining graph theory and computer programming in order to streamline the creation of network graphs.

It’s amazing to see such untapped potential coming from students across the world and in the strained political climate it’s become more necessary than ever to remind people that race, religion and gender discrimination have no place in the world of progress.