CALIFORNIA, USA (Commonwealth Union)_ Four Indian American youngsters have been honored with the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes for positively impacting the lives of people, communities, and the environment. The 2022 winners are 17-year-old Karina Samuel from Florida; 17-year-old Karun Kaushik from California; 18-year-old Laalitya Acharya from Ohio; and 13-year-old Sri Nihal Tammana from New Jersey.
The Barron Prize, founded in 2001 by novelist TA Barron, is a charitable organization that annually recognizes 25 exceptional young leaders aged 8 to 18. The award recognizes outstanding, civic-minded youth from varied origins throughout North America. Each year, 15 winners get $10,000 to fund their community service or higher education. Since its establishment, the Barron Prize has granted over $500,000 to hundreds of young heroes and has garnered the backing of several organizations, including the National Geographic Education Foundation, Girl Scouts of the USA, and the National Youth Leadership Council.
Karun Kaushik has developed X-Check-MD, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based test kit which uses a program that is capable of detecting COVID-19 and pneumonia diseases with 99 percent accuracy in less than a minute.
Karina Samuel was recognized for establishing the Florida chapter of Bye Bye Plastic Bags (BBPB), a student-run non-profit organization dedicated to decreasing the volume of plastic on Earth. In the previous three years, she has recruited over a thousand volunteers to participate in over 175 beach cleanup programs around the state.
Laalitya Acharya has designed Nereid, an inexpensive, universally applicable gadget that can find water pollution within seconds and at a cheap cost. Her device employs Artificial Intelligence and may be installed directly into water pipes to identify tiny quantities of microbial water pollution before it spreads.
Recycle My Battery, Nihal Tammana’s charitable organization, places free battery recycling containers, thereby teaching children and adults regarding battery recycling. Within three years, he has gathered a global team of 220 student volunteers who have recycled approximately two hundred thousand batteries and taught millions of people.
