Los Altos High School junior Ashwin Mukherjee is on a research team that is among 15 finalists in the U.S. Department of Energy’s AlgaePrize competition.
The team, Algaeorithm, includes Mukherjee’s cousin Rohan Chanani, a student at The Paideia School in Atlanta, and research scientist Jake Valenzuela at the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle. Mukherjee and Chanani met Valenzuela at an ISB program they attended last summer to study bioengineering and computational modeling, respectively. By the end of the course, the cousins reached out to Valenzuela, whose research primarily concerns algae’s potential as a biofuel, to see if he would be interested in working with them on a longer-term project.
The idea for an app that could efficiently quantify lots of information about algae cells developed organically when Valenzuela’s expertise aligned with Mukherjee and Chanani’s interests.
“One of the biggest factors we considered when going into this project was thinking about how we can combine both of our skill sets into one project,” Mukherjee said.
Algaeorithm is an image analysis application that can quickly synthesize information on algae datasets, replacing the work of manually analyzing datasets with a rapid machine-based learning app. Mukherjee said the other goal of Algaeorithm is to increase awareness about bioenergy and machine learning among students.
Algaeorithm may be less than a year old, but it has already hit several milestones. The team won second place in the Georgia’s 5th Congressional District App Challenge and also earned $1,000 in funding from Silicon Valley Clean Energy for further development of the product.
Despite their successes, Mukherjee and Chanani were hesitant to apply for the AlgaePrize, deciding to register less than a week before the deadline. What followed was a month of time-consuming, challenging work to compose a 10-page research synopsis. They found out about their status as finalists a few weeks later.
Being a finalist in the national competition will bring them $5,000 in funding to support their research project on the sustainable fuel potential of algae. The money will go toward continued hosting of their online platform and new research instruments to expand the capabilities and level of accuracy of the app.
Mukherjee and Chanani were especially excited to advance to the finals of the competition, as they are the only high school students among any of the finalist teams – their competition includes teams of both college undergraduate and graduate students.
“It’s a competition that is open to students of all ages, from high school to grad students, so the competition is a lot tougher than something like the Congressional App Challenge,” Mukherjee said.
Algaeorithm will continue its research over the next year and present its research project at the AlgaePrize Competition Weekend Event in Colorado next April, with up to $15,000 in prizes at stake. Following the end of the competition, Mukherjee plans to attend college to further study bioengineering.
For more information, visit algaeorithm.com.
