An 18-Year-Old Girl From West Bengal Has Won One Of NASA’s Top Scholarships

 

Prodigies aren’t a scarcity in our country. India is chock full of kids and teenagers who are brilliant, study-wise as well as intellect-wise. We hear almost every day about a college student getting hired by Google or Microsoft. The future is bright for our country.

Update:

News has surfaced that Sataparna Mukherjee might not have received the internship offer after all. According to DNA, NASA has stated that they do not have any institute in London, and that they offer the internship only to US citizens living in a 50 mile radius of their organisation. The news appears to be fabricated until any further clarifications from Mukherjee or NASA.

Sataparna Mukherjee, an 18-year old class 12 girl from West Bengal, got awarded a scholarship by NASA.

NASA’s Goddard Internship Programme (GIP) under the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) chooses five students from the world for it’s prestigious scholarship programme. Sataparna, who studies at St. Judes School, Madhyamgram, in Kamduni, a village about 30 km. outside of Kolkata, bagged the scholarship after posting her thoughts on Black Hole Theory on a social networking group.

 

She was urged to post her thoughts as a paper on NASA’s official website.

A member of the group she was part of recommended her to submit her thoughts on NASA’s official website. Her findings were on the topic of Black Hole Theory and how it can be used to build a Time Machine. NASA will be funding her entire education after school and she will be slated to pursue her further studies in Aerospace Engineering from Oxford University in London.

 

She will also work as a researcher under the Goddard Internship Programme.

According to the GIP fine print, Sataparna will get to work as an employee and researcher under the Earth Science and Technology Development Programme at the NASA Centre in London. Apart from bearing her expenses, NASA will also reward Sataparna with a handsome sum as honorarium. Sataparna will appear for her final examinations this year before gearing up to fly abroad.

Sataparna has become the youngest Indian student to be selected for such a research project, and her faculty members and father, a principal at a primary school, are proud of her achievements. Her intellect has soared to the skies, but we must not forget the part that social media has also played, albeit a small one, in her success story.

Congratulations Sataparna Mukherjee, the sky is the limit! ?

News sources: Times of India, Zee News

Cover image sources: 1 & 2