Orissa prodigy wins gold for US

Arnav Tripathy who lives with his parents in the US, took home the gold in the 47th Maths Olympiad held recently in Slovenia.

Arnav Tripathy (16) is Orissa’s “beautiful mind”. The teenager, who lives with his parents in the US, took home the gold in the 47th Maths Olympiad held recently in Slovenia, beating off competition from 90 countries.

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In an e-mail to HT, Arizona State University’s Prof Chitta Baral said: “While students from China, eastern Europe and Russia performed extremely well, Arnav topped the US merit list with 30 points. He fared better than his Indian counterparts. India managed a bronze with 16 points.”

Arnav and five other students were selected to represent the US from an initial pool of 2,30,000. His father, Ashutosh Tripathy, migrated to the US in 1986. They hail from Bilaspur village in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district. Arnav has taken part in several math competitions — including the US Math Olympiad and Harvard-MIT Math Tournament.

Divine intervention

Roorkee: Driven by success at Vaishno Devi, Badrinath and Kedarnath, the unique experiment of linking places of religious importance with the economic empowerment of women is spreading to other areas. The new entry to the list is the Sufi shrine of Piran Kaliyar in Uttaranchal, where a project is underway to better the lives of 250 women from nearby villages.

These women have been trained by HESCO, an NGO, to prepare incense sticks, wood carving of Piran Kaliyar and tabbaruk (offerings) with locally available resources. As part of a project supported by the Department of Bio-technology, the Uttaranchal Wakf Board, which manages the shrine, has agreed to buy these items and sell them to pilgrims.