In a historic achievement for India, a planet in the Milky Way has been named after a 12th standard girl from Bengaluru.
Sahithi Pingali has developed an app to collect data on the frothy, polluted lakes of Bengaluru through crowd-sourcing. She entered the app in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) and was one of the 2,000 finalists from around the world. She came within the top 3% at the ISEF competition.
Since the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has the power to name minor planets, they have named a planet in the Milky Way after Sahithi.
The girl prodigy is currently doing an internship at the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department of the University of Michigan. She says that water pollution is on her mind, and wants to deal with the issue.
