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Naperville teen a “powerhouse student” at Harvard

A powerhouse student with a prodigious combination of prowess, enthusiasm and vision.

Such a combination of superlatives might sound borderline excessive, but it's how teachers and mentors describe Meena Jagadeesan, an 18-year-old from Naperville whose high-level math research earned her a combined $125,000 in scholarships.

Now a freshman at Harvard University, Meena was selected last month as a Davidson Fellow by the Davidson Institute of Talent Development for her math research project, titled “The Exchange Graphs of Weakly Separated Collections.”

The same research earned her a second-place, $75,000 scholarship at this year's Intel Science Talent Search held in March.

In her project, Meena used a field of math called “combinatorics” to study higher dimensional vector spaces, which has applications in neuroscience and differential geometry.

It's usually a challenge to identify the best projects among all the outstanding entries for the Davidson competition, judge Ken Ono said. But not this year.

“This year it was simple,” Ono said. “It is quite bold for a high school student to attempt to work at the leading edge of mathematics. But she did.”

Her work “added new fundamental results” and identified phenomena that are “driving the field forward,” he added.

“In a nutshell, she solved a major open problem, and she has suggested the next problems in the field. The combination of technical prowess and vision for the future is prodigious.”

So what is it about math that she loves so much?

“I really enjoy learning subjects in depth,” Meena said. “(In my research), I started with one concept and kept going deeper and deeper into it. It was really cool how deep it was and how interesting it got as I kept learning more and more about that specific concept.”

As for people who say they don't like math, it's all about how you think of it, she says.

“Don't think of math as just solving an equation,” she said. “I was a peer tutor in math at Exeter (Academy) and helped a lot of kids who were not interested in math at all. I would tell themto try to think about the bigger picture, and how everything is really connected.”

Meena conducted her yearlong research through the Primes program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when she was a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire. She took the train from Exeter to MIT — a 90-minute trip each way — once a week to do that.

Her mentor, MIT graduate student Miriam Farber, said Meena is unfailingly enthusiastic and hardworking.

“This is a very important trait for a researcher in general, and for a mathematician in particular,” Farber said. “When you work on a mathematical problem or conjecture you may get stuck, and Meena won't give up. This level of independence and dedication is very impressive, in particular at her young age.”

Meena credited her love of math to her family. Both her parents are computer scientists, and all four of her grandparents are mathematicians.

Her older brother, Ravi, is a junior math major at Harvard. He was named a Davidson Fellow two years ago.

Meena is “an absolute powerhouse student,” said Jeff Ibbotson, her math professor at Exeter, from which she graduated in May with an unweighted GPA of 10.75 out of 11.

The difficulty of her first research paper was equivalent to senior-level undergraduate work, he said.

“She has a penetrating mind and can typically see several steps ahead of even the best students,” Ibbotson said.

Boarding school was a great experience, made easier by the relative proximity of her brother at Harvard.

“Like any high school, there were competitive aspects, but having such a great group of friends, such a supportive network, and such supportive teachers made it a great overall experience,” she said.

Like many high-achieving students, Meena puts pressure on herself, but has learned to ease up on that with age.

“There have been times when I haven't succeeded as much as I wanted to,” she said. “For example, during my sophomore year there was a math competition that I really wanted to do really well, but I didn't do as well. That experience taught me even more to do what I enjoy, and try not to worry about the results.”

• If you know of a young person whose story wows you, please send a note including name, town, email and phone contacts for you and the nominee to standouts@dailyherald.com.

  "I really enjoy learning subjects in depth," Meena Jagadeesan of Naperville says of her affinity for mathematics. "(In my research), I started with one concept and kept going deeper and deeper into it. It was really cool how deep it was and how interesting it got as I kept learning more and more about that specific concept." Bev Horne/bhorne@dailyherald.com
Meena Jagadeesan, 18, credits her love of math to her family. Both parents are computer scientists, and all four of her grandparents are mathematicians. Her older brother, Ravi, is a junior at Harvard University. Photo courtesy of Meena Jagadeesan
  A display for "The Exchange Graphs of Weakly Separated Collections," an award-winning research project by Meena Jagadeesan, 18, of Naperville. Bev Horne/bhorne@dailyherald.com

Meena Jagadeesan

Age: 18

Hometown: Naperville

School: Harvard University

Who inspires you? My older brother Ravi. I'm inspired by his consistent passion, enthusiasm, and concentration that carries him through his work.

What book are you reading? Nothing right now. My favorite book is “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy.

What music are you listening to? One of my favorites is Band of Horses. I like alternative rock.

The three words that best describe you? Energetic. Passionate. Bubbly.

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