Students from separate high schools in San Ramon have been selected as two of only four students statewide to participate as California’s delegates at the National Youth Science Camp, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced.
Aadity Sharma, a student at Dougherty Valley High School, and Meghana Balabhadruni, a student at California High School, joined a student from Orange County and another from San Diego County as the state’s four delegates at the camp, which is happening virtually this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, state Department of Education officials said.
Sharma has interned for a nonprofit in India, collecting and analyzing data about regular flooding there, co-founded a nonprofit called One Step at a Time to provide free tutoring to middle and elementary school students online, and is a member of the San Ramon Teen Council, a panel appointed by the City Council to advise it on issues surrounding youth, according to the Department of Education.
Balabhadruni was awarded first place in a HOSA-Future Health Professionals competition on the topic of public service announcements and is the president of Science Alliance, an after-school program in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District that allows fifth graders to be mentored by high school students, education officials said.
Balabhadruni will be attending University of California, Davis, while Sharma will be attending University of California, Santa Cruz.
More information about the National Youth Science Camp, which before the pandemic was held annually in Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, can be found online.