Columbus Monthly / May 2012 / Super Students: Sachin Rudraraju

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Super Students: Sachin Rudraraju

Research and recycling

Reading Sachin Rudraraju’s résumé (three-and-a-half pages, single-spaced) requires a dictionary and a strong dose of self-esteem. His research descriptions get technical, fast. Most adults will never come close to matching the breadth of his community service—it spans the globe—or accumulate a fraction of his awards, achievements and scholarships. Really, what were you doing at 17?

To understand, in part, Rudraraju’s work ethic, you have to begin with his parents. They came from rural southeast India and moved here when he was a tot, partly because he had been diagnosed with hemophilia and needed better care. His dad, Bhaskara, the first in his family to obtain higher education, is a software architect at Nationwide Insurance. Padma, his mom, is a night-shift nurse at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. They place a tremendous value on education.

Rudraraju is the first to tell you he values it, too. This TechColumbus 2011 High School Student of the Year and National Merit Finalist has taken 15 AP classes—heavy on the math and science—and six OSU courses. He’s currently working with Dr. Mahmood Khan in OSU’s Heart & Lung Research Institute, researching stem cell-based therapy for cardiomyoplasty.

When Rudraraju was just 14, he signed on for research as a student volunteer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Dr. Peter White, director of the Biomedical Genomics Core at the NCH Research Institute, was so impressed with his ability he brought him back as a full-time research aide the next two summers. “We were comparing liver and muscle tissue samples of runt piglets with normal ones,” Rudraraju explains. “We found that the runts developed more disorders—obesity, heart disease.”

His AP chemistry teacher at Olentangy Liberty High School, Liz Golowenski, witnessed a transformation—from student to scientist—during that time. “Suddenly, being a doctor was a mission—he had found his goal,” she says. Rudraraju wants to focus on neuroscience and the brain, and he hopes to attend Northwestern or Cornell in the fall.

Helping others is part of his mission, too. In 2007, Rudraraju’s concern for the vast amount of e-waste led him to start the Community Recycling Campaign, now a nonprofit. He’s collected and recycled more than 50,000 pounds of electronics, refurbishing many of the computers himself and donating them to the needy. He founded an Adopt-a-School program for 20 schools in India to promote recycling awareness—and raised nearly $6,000 to set up information centers and run the recycling efforts.

As a winner of the EPA-President’s Environmental Youth Award for his recycling programs, Rudraraju recently received an invitation to a summit at the White House. But he’ll be in Atlanta at that time on an all-expenses-paid trip for Coca-Cola scholarship winners.

Twice, Rudraraju has been a finalist at the International Intel Science and Engineering Fair. He found time to attend last year’s event in Los Angeles. “There were about 1,500 students,” he recalls. “They closed Universal Studios just for us!”

His summer is full: finishing a combat robot he’s building for fun, representing Ohio at a five-week session of the National Youth Science Camp and taking a month-long family trip to India. “It’s been six years,” Rudraraju says. “We’re excited to
go back.”