Hari Bhimaraju

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Hari Bhimaraju
Hari Bhimaraju
Born Manasa Hari Bhimaraju
2003 (age 20–21)
Education Kennedy Middle School, Cupertino
Home town Cupertino, California
Parent(s) Prasad Bhimaraju, Gayatri Bhimaraju

Hari Bhimaraju (born Manasa Hari Bhimaraju, 2003) is a young science innovator from Cupertino, California, USA, who is known for developing The Elementor, a low-cost Periodic table teaching aid and smartphone software app for the visually impaired which provides an interface using sound and LEDs to show the position of the valence electrons and radioactivity for a given chemical element.[1][2] She is also known for developing a medicine management app which she describes as being designed to address accidental drug non-compliancy in groups such as the blind, visually impaired, elderly and those living with Alzheimers,[3] and to give audible information on contents and dosage as well as reordering medicines when necessary. She has exhibited at the White House Science Fair and was the 2015 Broadcom MASTERS Technology Award winner.

Education and achievements

Bhimaraju attends Kennedy Middle School, Cupertino, in California.[4] At age 11 Bhimaraju used her Raspberry Pi and Arduino to develop an award-winning computer program which teaches students the periodic table of the elements, which is inclusive of visually impaired students as it uses sound[5] and can be used with a braille keyboard.[6] The system uses LED lights for people with limited vision as well as sound and voice features to describe the relative positions of electrons of a given element. The system also uses a simulation of a Geiger counter to give information about an element's radioactivity.[7] Bhimaraju, at 11 years old, was the youngest finalist in 2015.[6] She uses Java (programming language) which she learned through her parents and through Stack Overflow website.[8] The system won her recognition and she was awarded a first place STEM award in technology in the Broadcom MASTERS National Middle School STEM Competition in 2015.[9] When she began the project she was not yet studying chemistry at school so her mother, Gayatri, started teaching science and chemistry to Hari, her brother and two friends at home. Her father, Prasad, then began teaching her to program in Java programming language, and that summer her grandfather began teaching her digital electronics.[10]

File:Hari Bhimaraju and Bill Nye the Science Guy.jpg
Hari Bhimaraju and Bill Nye the Science Guy

At age 12 she was invited by President Obama to exhibit her project at the White House Science Fair,[11] where she met Bill Nye the Science Guy and the President's chief data scientist, DJ Patil who, as she discovered, had attended her school.[12]

She went on to further develop the Elementor periodic table application into a free download Apple iPhone app.[13]

In 2015 she attended a biomedical sciences summer camp held by the John Hopkins Center for talented youth and then got the idea for a medicine management system which uses RFID tags to log drugs taken, to order repeat prescriptions and to create reminder alerts for medicines due to be taken which she later developed. After designing the software the following year she developed an IPhone app which in addition to managing medicines taken and reordering, can read out drug information and dosage to blind and visually impaired users.[14] The system can also be used with raised QR codes[15] for which she won the Project CSGirls competition which encourages young girls to excel in computer science, math, and technology and is open to middle school girls.[16][17] In an interview with ABC News about the integrated medicine management system she said <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

I can make a difference with this idea to manage medicines. When I actually go to blind centers and I see how thankful the people really are, and I actually meet the person, I think that makes a huge impact.[8]

Bhimaraju is also a student innovator at, and is mentored by, Piper Inc., a technologies company developing programmable hardware and software for children.[8] She is vice-president of the Donum Visi Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by her sister Divija, which practically and financially supports visually impaired people and has the goal of educating the public about blindness.[18] In April 2017 Bhimaraju is speaking at Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired's 4th annual Principal's of Schools for the Blind (POSB) Math and Science Institute where she is presenting three of her online tools for the blind and visually impaired, including an Ipad brain teaser game.[19]

Awards and recognition

  • 2015 Engineering Award (1st Place) in the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship, for her low cost periodic table learning tool.[22]
  • 2015 California State Science Fair Mathematics and Software Award (2nd place).[4]
  • In recognition of her Broadcom MASTERS achievement, Bhimaraju has a minor planet named after her, 31637 Bhimaraju, discovered in 1999 by the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research Team.[23]
  • Exhibitor at the 2016 White House Science Fair on April 13, 2016[24][7] for further development of the Elementor, her periodic table learning tool for the visually impaired.
  • 2016 winning project in the ProjectCSGIRLS competition, a project which encourages young girls to excel in computer science, math, and technology which is open to girls of middle school age resident in the United States,[3] awarded for her medicine management app for the blind and visually impaired. The project uses RFID tags to track which medicines are being administered and includes alerts to remind users of medicines due to be taken. The application can also be extended to other client bases such as the elderly and those living with Alzheimers.

Personal life

Bhimaraju is not sure what field she would like to follow but in an interview at the White House Science Fair in 2016 said, "I want to do something 'sciencey' that helps people, so maybe like a biomedical engineer."[25] An article about her was featured in Raspberry Pi weekly newsletter[26] where Bhimaraju said she would like to study at Stanford University.[8] Bhimaraju was invited to the White House a second time with 25 other guests for a special showing of the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on December 16, 2016 where she met Barack Obama for a second time, Michelle Obama and Star Wars actor Mark Hamill. Her mother Gayatri originally believed the email invitation to be a hoax but was eventually reassured by a member of the White House staff, and then Bhimaraju was allowed to travel unaccompanied to Washington.[27] Bhimaraju has an older sister, Divija,[1] who is the president and founder of Donum Visi,[18] and a younger brother, Sriram.[27] Her parents are both software engineers.[27]

References

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  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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