BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE


Tanay Kothari Class XI-L

Brilliant performance in the ACT (American College Testing) exam – 36/36!. In 2014, less than 0.08% of the 1.85 million students who took the test achieved a Full Score.

He also scored 5/5 in the two AP Exams – Computer Science and Calculus BC taken last year.

In addition, he has qualified in the zonal rounds of IMO and IOI, 2014 and is looking forward to the Nationals.

Tanay also qualified in the Nationals in both the Informatics and Linguistics Olympiads, and will be attending the training programmes in Chennai and Bangalore, respectively. Another proud moment for the school!

Academic Excellence:

  • Tanay has a brilliant academic track record and scored a CGPA of 10.0 in both Class IX and Class X.
  • He was one of the top scorers in the mid-term exams of Class XI with over 93% marks.
  • The School has awarded him with two Gold Medals, several Blue and Red Ties and Blue and Red Blazers for excellence in academics and extra-curricular activities.
  • Over the years, Tanay has won several accolades for the School, representing the School in innumerous State/ National/ International competitions in the fields of Mathematics, Science and Computer Science.

Recognition and Awards:

  • Tanay is an NTSE Scholar as well as a JSTSE Scholar.
  • He was part of the School team which participated in the International Space Settlement Design Competition (ISSDC’14) held at NASA, Kennedy Space Center, Florida and led his ‘Company’ as the Vice President of Engineering.
  • He was also part of the School team that stood 3rd in the International NASA AMES Competition, 2013.
  • He stood 1st at the International Space Habitat Design Competition (SHDC) in 2013 and was awarded a 7-day residential course at the Euro Space Center (ESC) in Belgium.
  • He secured International Rank 3 in 2013 and Rank 7 in 2012 in NCO;
  • He came 3rd in UCO in both 2013 and 2014, 5th in IMO in 2010 and 6th in NSO in 2009.
  • He stood 2nd in All India MJ Maths Competition in 2014 and was awarded a scholarship of      INR 7,50,000.
  • He was awarded INR 5,000 in 2012 as a part of the Government of India’s INSPIRE (SEATS) Scheme for designing and creating a robotic remote control car with self-developed software.
  • He stood 1st in the Ramanujam and Maths Competition.
  • He was also awarded INR 5,000 scholarship in the DPS Science and Maths Talent Exam conducted by SOF in 2012.

Technology Thought Leadership:

  • Tanay has completed 17 undergraduate courses online from top universities like Stanford, MIT, Brown, UPenn, etc. in the fields of Computer Science and Mathematics, most with Distinction.
  • At 16, he is one of the youngest Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer: Windows Store Apps Using C# (MCSD).
  • He can program in 13 languages – C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Racket, Visual Basic, SML/NJ, C#, Octave, JavaScript, Objective C, Swift. He has developed several applications for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Windows Store and expresses his creative side through 3D Modeling in Autodesk Maya and Cinema 4D.
  • At the Intel UNESCO Hackathon, his team was given the Best Research Project Award for their Project on “Cyber-security”.
  • He finished 2nd in the GSF Hackathon’14 (and 1st in the All-India online round). He was the youngest participant to be ever selected for the Final Round.
  • At School, he is a very active member of the Aerospace Society (AEROSS), Computer Club (EXUN) and the Math Society.

Entrepreneurial Instinct:

  • Tanay has an entrepreneurial bent of mind and founded “Simpulse” along with a close friend whilst still in Class VIII.
  • He has developed several apps like the fan app for the famous TV show – Big Bang Theory which got more than 6,000 downloads and games like ‘Interstellar’ that are very popular amongst teenagers.
  • He is currently working on a personal voice assistant for Android named ‘Aria’, with advanced natural language processing features which he intends to patent and showcase to the world later this year.
  • Keen to get an exposure to the ‘real’ world, since April 2014, he has been working during vacations and over weekends as a Technical Director at Investopad Creative Labs, Gurgaon, which runs an Accelerator Program to incubate startups.
  • Here, he is a co-founder and the technical lead of the team responsible for design and development of the soon-to-be-released social travel-based mobile app codenamed ‘Proximity’.
  • Furthermore, he has had the opportunity to work with and provide technical input to other startups in the area. He has also assisted in technical due diligence and evaluation of other tech startups for proprietary venture capital investments by Investopad.

Passion for the Arts:

  • Tanay is equally passionate about Music and is a very talented singer.
  • He has been learning the Hindustani Classical music since he was 5 years old!
  • He plays the keyboard, harmonium and the guitar and sings Hindustani Classical, Indian and Western songs.
  • He has been giving public performances from a very early age and is member of the School Indian Music Choir.
  • He has completed the 1st Year of Junior Diploma Course (Music-Vocal) conducted by the Pragyan Sangeet Samiti, Allahabad and appeared for the 2nd Year exam in December 2014.
  • He has also completed ‘Introduction to Guitar’ from Berkeley College of Music, scoring 94.0% marks.

  Caring for Community:

  • His desire for community service led him to Pratham Books (www.prathambooks.org), part of India’s largest NGO ‘Pratham’, where Tanay has been serving as a Student Volunteer since March, 2014. Tanay is leading the ‘Project for digitisation of Pratham Books’ physical story book library’, which will enable children in the remotest parts of the world to access them online in a high quality, interactive format.
  • The Project has taken him on several field trips to Schools in some very remote areas to get a first hand experience of how such poor children in remote areas learn. The template is ready (http://goo.gl/Yi91pK) and can be replicated for other story books with little incremental effort. The first phase of the Project will be completed by mid-2015.
  • Keen to give back to the School, he has been conducting programming and math sessions for Class VII-X students, preparing them for International Olympiads.

Sports:

  • Tanay believes in ‘Healthy mind healthy body’ and is very particular about making time for a game of squash or an hour of swimming on most days.
  • He finds adventure sports very exciting like mountain biking and rafting.

Future Ready:

  • Inspired by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, Tanay aspires to build technology solutions that can revolutionize the way people live their lives and can help solve some of the toughest problems faced by the world today.
  • To this end, he aims to undergo formal education in Computer Science from a top university – like Stanford or MIT – to supplement his own learning initiatives and his scientific bent of mind.