Sreyas Misra (12) was named one of 40 finalists selected from the Intel Science Talent Search (STS) on Jan. 22 in an official press release on the Intel STS website.

According to the press release, the Intel STS is a program of Society for Science & the Public and “encourages students to tackle challenging scientific questions and develop skills to help solve some of the world’s greatest challenges.”

A pool of 300 semifinalists are selected from the initial contestants, and a further 40 finalists are chosen to present their projects at Washington, D.C. from March 6-12 to compete for a total of $630,000 in prizes funded by the Intel Foundation.

“At first, I thought it was a prank call or something. I didn’t believe it that much, so I was only convinced when I saw it in writing, which happened the morning after,” Sreyas said. “It was pretty surprising.”

Sreyas’ project was entitled “Design and Characterization of a Novel Single-headed and Hand-held PET Camera Using 511 keV Photon Collimation via Compton Scatter,” which involved developing a hand-held tablet for medical image scanning of relatively low expense.

“PET scanners are these really large medical machine scanners that doctors use to diagnose diseases like cancer,” he said. “The scanners are typically one room large, but the one I simulated was the size of a tablet.”

Sreyas’ mentors included Dr. Craig Levin, Professor of Radiology, Physics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and Chris Spenner, Upper School physics and science teacher.

“The only way you can do [Sreyas’ project] is by having [the scanner] detect the signal in a fundamentally different way than the ones that are currently used,” Spenner said. “So there were a huge number of different variables to consider in his problem, there were a number of software programming challenges to overcome, and he did it by being very devoted.”

For the upcoming competition in Washington, D.C., Sreyas expressed anticipation and slight anxiety.

“I have to make a posterboard, and I have to give practice speeches to the faculty, and they will give me pointers,” he said. “I haven’t [looked at] much of my research for awhile, the last time I did was in November.”

In comparison from past years, Spenner didn’t see too much of a change in how the Upper School as a whole did in the contest, but he does want to reassure those students who were not chosen as semifinalists or finalists.

“I think that the judging process is a little bit opaque, and it’s not necessarily the best representation of what real science values; for example, we had plenty of students who did excellent work and work that is probably worthy of being published at some point in a scientific journal,” he said. “So it’s very nice for the students who do get recognized, but then I worry that students who don’t get the recognition get the wrong message.”

Spenner also praised Sreyas’ work ethic throughout the extensive process.

“He communicated his work extremely well, which is very important, so his writing skills came through,” Spenner said. “He made good use of the resources he had available to him, but he always completely owned the project, and I think that comes through in the writing in the end.”

According The Mercury News, 11 of the 40 finalists, or more than 25 percent, are from California, while 48 of the 300 semifinalists came from California. The Intel STS received 1,800 entrants this year.

Sreyas will present his project along with 39 other finalists before a group of judges in March. He developed a device that helps medical image scanning at a low cost.

This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on Jan. 27, 2014