The book sits on a table; the table exerts a normal force on the book. You remove the book from the table; the table relaxes that force in proportion to the speed of your motion. In elementary school, Neelesh Ramachandran (12) stared at the configuration, wondering how the inanimate objects could know what to do.

“I have always thought of life in terms of dynamic animate moving things,” Neelesh said. “People do things for a reason; there is always a rationale behind why things happen the way they do; there is always a clear explanation.”

Once an enigma, physics has come to transform Neelesh’s worldview. His love for problem solving introduced him to the United States Association for Young Physicists Tournament (USAYPT) in high school, and he volunteered to lead the team.

“Physics sort of presents puzzles where you have to dig deep in order to figure out any sort of insight,” he said. “Once you figure out that insight, you have unlocked the key into so many different problems so many different worldly phenomena. For example, a simple formula like F = ma, Newton’s second law—so many people know what it is, but you don’t realize how many applications it can have until you use it. You can extend problems infinitely and make them infinitely complex.”

Physics teacher Dr. Mark Brada appreciates Neelesh’s fascination with the subject.

“He is the kind of student who is really interested in the problems, interested in the physics not so much his grade,” Brada said. “He got great grades in my class, but that was because he really wanted to understand the underlying principles. He asked crazy questions in class that showed that he was thinking beyond the level of the class.”

Neelesh’s interest in broader learning stems from his father, who draws upon his knowledge of many subjects to explain concepts outside his engineering expertise.

“My dad is very curious,” Neelesh said. “He is an engineer, so he obviously knows about electrical engineering and fiber optics, which is what he does, but if you ask him about whatever happened in the War of 1812, he can give you a sort of concise response. The way he thinks is by connecting broad principles, and that’s the way I try to approach learning as a whole. Nobody learns biology and only uses biology, because inherent in biology [are] concepts in chemistry and concepts in physics, so you have to look at everything. Especially this is true within STEM and outside of STEM—you have to be looking at the broader picture and [know] how to combine different domains, different aspects in science. That’s where the power really comes through.”

Through his family, Neelesh connects to traditional Indian values. When he and his brother Sasvath Ramachandran (8) were young, the family visited their relatives in India for about a month every summer.

“My travels exposed me to traditional Indian value systems like saving money, saving water, not wasting food,” he said. “For example, here we eat out of paper plates and throw things away, but the custom there is to eat every single edible item on your leaf and then you fold up the leaf and give it to the cow, which serves as food.”

Back in the Bay Area, Neelesh stays close to his Tamil culture by volunteering at the California Tamil Academy. A student at the academy since he was four years old, he became a teacher at the academy his sophomore year.

“Ever since I was little, the academy was right next to my house,” he said. “We would go every Sunday for a couple of hours, and basically I would be taught by volunteer teachers about my Tamil culture and language. One thing I noticed immediately—I didn’t appreciate it definitely when I was younger—but the people that are there are invested in what they are doing, and the only reward they are getting is emotional satisfaction when a student passes an exam or when they learn to start speaking without an accent. I didn’t understand why teachers get so much gratification when a single student grasps a single concept in a single class, but after having been a student and [becoming] a graduate student teacher three years ago, I feel the same happiness [and] same thrill when they finally get something. If a student has been struggling with something for couple of weeks and they finally understand it so they can explain it to me or to someone else, they really deeply understand it. I feel like that’s a rewarding experience.”

Senior Divija Bhimaraju describes Neelesh as “thoughtful,” “intelligent,” and “humble.” She even notes his “numerical sense of humor.” But more than any of those qualities, she values his dependability as a friend.

“He always thinks about [how] consequences may affect people before he does anything,” she said. “If he can do something he will tell you upfront that he can do it, and if he can’t he will tell you he can’t do it and he won’t go back on that.”

Neelesh values his commitments, always deliberating before he chooses to take on a responsibility.

“If I have the time and the bandwidth to do [something] properly, then I throw myself into it and do it as properly, as deeply, as thoroughly as I can,” he said.