Apoorva Panidapu

Apoorva Panidapu is a 15-year-old high-school sophomore in San Jose, California. Apoorva wears many hats; she’s a student, a teacher, an aspiring mathematician, an artist, a social entrepreneur, and a public speaker who loves helping kids around the world. Apoorva started taking college classes at age 11, and has since completed several upper-division and graduate-level mathematics courses with a keen interest in Number Theory. She attended the prestigious Canada/USA Mathcamp (2018, 2019) and the highly selective University of Virginia REU in 2020 as the youngest student there. She is grateful to have the opportunity to work with world-renowned mathematicians in her fields of interest and has co-authored and published papers in Number Theory–one of which was published in the prestigious Journal of Number Theory.

Apoorva has received several worldwide recognitions for her achievements in STEM, such as her performance in NBC National TV show Genius Junior in 2018 hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and was nicknamed “Human Calculator”. She also received global awards such as the prestigious Spirit of Ramanujan Fellowship, and World Science Scholar awards given to scholars who have demonstrated extraordinary mathematical talent. She is a recipient of the 2020 Global Child Prodigy Award and was named Top 100 child prodigies of the world.
Her love of learning is matched by her passion for art. As an enthusiastic artist, Apoorva loves to oil paint and sketch portraits. She particularly enjoys impressionistic and abstract artworks. Apoorva is the founder of Apoorva Panidapu’s Art Gallery, an online creative platform, dedicated to sharing art and impacting change in the world.

She is the grand prize winner of NASA Langley Research Center’s Centennial Student Art Contest, as well as a recipient of four Presidential Volunteer Service Awards. Her story and artworks were featured nationally and globally in Artists for Peace, Stone Soup, Save the Children, and Ellen and Cheerios “One Million Acts of Good.” She has helped to raise over $25,000 to support people around the world, including visually impaired kids in India, Black Lives Matter funds, Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM which creates pathways for underserved students to pursue STEM), and other organizations. In addition to the presidential volunteer service awards, she also received the Daily Point of Light Award for her community service. Her mission is to encourage others to use their gifts to make a difference in the world.

Apoorva is a renowned speaker, serving as keynote speaker for several global events, including TIE Inflect Entrepreneur conferences, Women in Tech, Youth STEM 2030, and Girls Leadership Academy Meetups (GLAM) events, to list a few.

She co-founded the Gems in STEM initiative with the goal of teaching about various topics in math, science, engineering, and technology through the stories of diverse and pivotal figures in STEM history. As a part of this, she has been publishing bi-weekly articles in the Evergreen Times newspaper, Medium, and Cantor's Paradise, the #1 math publication on Medium. She has also won several national and state awards for her speaking and writing.

Apoorva encourages girls, gender minorities, and all youth to pursue STEAM fearlessly. In addition to her art gallery and Gems in STEM, she is a global ambassador for GLAM (Girls Leadership Academy Meetup), where she helps encourage girls aged 8-12 from diverse backgrounds to pursue leadership and careers in tech. Her mission is to encourage others to use their gifts to make a difference in the world.

In terms of service, she is a leadership circle member of Save the Children, works with the non-profit VT Seva to empower visually impaired and tribal children, and also volunteers with the local bi-lingual school to encourage kids to pursue their passions. Apoorva leads math clubs for kids across the nation and ran summer workshops for kids stuck at home during the 2020 Covid pandemic.

In her spare time, Apoorva enjoys playing the violin, practicing kung fu, and reading classical literature. Apoorva aspires to combine pure mathematics, art, and humanities to change the world. She strives to continue her mission to support, encourage youth and gender minorities and to use her education to give back to the community.