Shravani Mikkilineni

MICHIGAN

Shravani Mikkilineni, 17, of Bloomfield Hills, studied the computation of continued fraction expansions of the square roots of positive integers for her Intel Science Talent Search project in mathematics. Continued fractions provide approximations to the square roots of non-square integers, but are not easily computed. Let d be the largest integer less than the square root of k. Shravani found an accessible computation in the case where 2d / (k - d ²) is a half integer. At Detroit Country Day School in Beverly Hills, Shravani is captain of the varsity tennis team and senior editor of the yearbook. Originally the only female on the team, she has emerged as a leader on her school's F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Team. Shravani played violin in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Sinfonia, and enjoys performing classical Indian dance. Her work in biology and math has earned numerous national awards, and she organized a fundraiser for a nonprofit charitable organization which benefits children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Ghana, collecting both electronics and school supplies. The daughter of Prasad and Jhansi Mikkilineni, she hopes to continue her math and biology research at Harvard, MIT or Stanford.