Two Los Altos Hills residents are among the honorees at this year’s INSPIRE Awards, a gala hosted by the nonprofit Science from Scientists March 26 in Burlingame.
Locals Timothy Chou and Rajiv Bhateja are two of the four people being recognized for inspiring others in STEM. Bhateja serves as mayor of Los Altos Hills.
The gala, in its second year, is a fundraiser for Science from Scientists, which brings scientists to schools lacking funding in their science departments, according to Richard Tam, the nonprofit’s director of partnerships.
“I’ve done these types of events before with honorees, and I like doing them because I also meet a lot of cool people along the way,” Tam said. “You get to know who people are. They’re movers and shakers, and then when you get to know them, they’re just really nice people at heart.”
A committee of seven volunteers from Science from Scientists selects the honorees, according to Tam.
Chou said he was likely chosen for founding the nonprofit Pediatric Moonshot, which aims to alleviate healthcare inequity. The Stanford University professor started the project in 2020, inspired by one of his students who was working on using AI in medicine.
“I brought a group of engineers together with a mission to reduce health care inequity, lower cost, improve outcomes for children, locally, rurally and globally,” said Chou, who teaches cloud computing. “How are we going to do that? By creating real-time privacy, preserving AI applications based on access to data in all one million healthcare machines in all 500 children’s hospitals in the world.”
Working to deliver stable security within healthcare systems, Chou said the usage of AI will be beneficial to the efficiency and accessibility of hospitals throughout the world.
“I think people now see a lot of the power of artificial intelligence,” Chou said. “I think what’s hard in pediatric medicine is that most kids are born healthy, yet, there are plenty of kids born, (with) pediatric cancers, cardiology problems, etc., but computers can be used to do … early detection, to do survivorship management, and so we know it’s possible.”
Fellow Hills resident Bhateja is being awarded for his career path, according to Tam. After completing his Ph.D. in structural engineering and working for multiple tech startups in Silicon Valley, Bhateja said he wanted to utilize his knowledge and aid the community.
Working to support the people of Los Altos Hills, Bhateja said he has worked on multiple projects during his time as mayor to support residents, such as an AI public records sorting application and holding presentations to prevent burglaries and cyber scams.
“I’ve always had that sort of mentality of trying to be of service, whether it’s at work or whether it’s outside work,” Bhateja said. “I actually run a town website, just as a community website, which I created, that has a summary for every council meeting that we have in town. I send out a summary of what’s relevant to residents, to try and engage with them and give them tips on safety.”
Bhateja said he also wants to give people opportunities to volunteer or utilize their talents.
“I’ve just always, always had a desire to give back and do something for the community; it’s been a long-standing kind of value of mine,” Bhateja said. “I get a lot of satisfaction from doing things that are valuable to the community. Even in my job in the computer industry, I focused on user interface, and I also ran customer support, and I was very conscientious about making sure people had a good experience.”
Tickets to the Inspire Awards are $175. The event will be held at the Fairview Crystal Springs Golf Club.
For tickets and more information, visit tinyurl.com/inspire-awards.
