Dikhyaa Mohanty 
In the nation’s leading science competition, Indian-origin Akilan Sankaran has won the top prize with a computer programme using “anti primer numbers” that can accelerate everyday processes. More than 1,800 middle school students from across the US entered the Broadcom Masters competition.
According to the reports, the 14-year-old won the $25,000 prize in the Broadcom Masters science and engineering competition on October 28. And three of the four winners of the next level prizes of $10,000 were also of Indian origin, as were 15 of the 30 finalists from around the country.
Akilan’s winning entry was the computer program that can calculate “highly divisible numbers” that are called anti primer numbers and are over 1,000 digits long.
The report further that Maya Ajmera, the president of the Society for Science (SfS) said- “The young people we are celebrating today are working to solve the world’s most intractable problems. The Broadcom Masters finalists serve as an inspiration to us all, and I know they will all go on to find immense success on their STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) journey.”
SFS further added that Akilan created a new class of functions � the smooth class � to measure a number’s divisibility” and his programme has the potential capacity to speed up and optimize the performance of software and apps. By analysing and developing ‘smooth highly divisible numbers’, Akilan’s goal was to make calculations run more quickly, in turn accelerating countless everyday processes and tasks.
Pic Courtesy – Google
