Pranav Sivakumar: Spelling Bee Runner-Up to Quasar Hunter

Biography

The spelling bee, 2013

TIME's account of the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals describes a 13-year-old boy from Tower Lakes, Illinois, who quizzed the officials about etymology, in the magazine's phrase, like a parent asking a naughty child questions he already knows the answers to. He spelled odontoloxia and haupia correctly. Eleven finalists had started the evening; Sivakumar was one of the last two left.

He lost on cyanophycean. TIME's diagnosis was blunt and technical: he had the wrong root. The title went to Arvind Mahankali, also 13, of Bayside Hills, New York, on knaidel, a German-derived Yiddish word for a small dumpling, as The New York Times reported the following morning. The judges that year worked from a sheet of 25 final words, with a provision that two contestants who spelled all of them correctly would be declared co-champions.

The quasar search, 2015

Two years later his name appeared on a very different list. Google's 2015 Science Fair drew thousands of teenagers worldwide and narrowed them to 20 global finalists, who were to present their projects to judges at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, on 21 September 2015. Sivakumar was listed among them, from the United States, with the project title “Automated search for gravitationally lensed quasars in the Sloan digital sky survey”.

The title describes a real problem in observational astronomy. Quasars are extremely luminous, extremely distant objects; when a massive galaxy lies between one and Earth, its gravity bends the light and can produce multiple images of the same quasar. Finding those cases by eye in a survey that catalogues hundreds of millions of objects is impractical, which is why an automated search is worth building. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is the public sky catalogue the project was run against.

What the Google Science Fair was

The competition was run by Google, with Andrea Cohen as its programme leader, and offered a $50,000 scholarship and other prizes to its winners. Reaching the last 20 out of thousands of entrants was the achievement recorded in the coverage used here.

What that coverage does not record is the outcome. The EdTech Magazine article used for this page was published in August 2015, before the finalists presented, and lists the projects rather than the results. Whether Sivakumar won a named award at the 2015 fair is not established by any source used here.

What is documented, and what is not

Firm: he was 13 in May 2013 and from Tower Lakes, Illinois; he reached the closing stages of the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee and went out on cyanophycean after spelling odontoloxia and haupia; and he was one of 20 global finalists at the 2015 Google Science Fair with a quasar-lensing project.

Not documented: his date of birth, his school, his family, and what he studied afterwards. A claim circulates that he received the Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award at the 2015 fair; it is not supported by any source used here, and the Google announcement consulted for a later edition of the fair shows that award going to a different student in a different year. Until a primary source confirms it, it should be treated as unverified.

Why the pairing is unusual

Spelling bees and science fairs test almost opposite things. The bee rewards a memory trained on orthographic patterns and language roots, retrieved instantly in front of a television audience; a research project rewards months of unsupervised work, mostly failure, with no audience at all. The bridge between them, in Sivakumar's case, is visible in TIME's description of him interrogating the officials about etymology rather than simply asking for the word again.

That is the habit of someone reconstructing a rule rather than recalling a fact. Applied to a sky survey, the same instinct becomes a search algorithm: rather than look at every object, work out what a lensed quasar has to look like and let the computer find the ones that match. Two national stages, two years apart, and the same method underneath.

Achievement Timeline

Pranav Sivakumar — every milestone on this page, in order.

30 May 2013

One of eleven finalists at the ScrippsOne of eleven finalists at the Scripps National Spelling Bee; spells odontoloxia and haupia, then goes out on cyanophycean. Arvind Mahankali wins on knaidel

August 2015

Named among the 20 global finalists ofNamed among the 20 global finalists of the 2015 Google Science Fair for an automated search for gravitationally lensed quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

21 September 2015

The finalists are due to present theirThe finalists are due to present their projects to judges at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California

Watch: Pranav Sivakumar on camera

Pranav Sivakumar - Google Science FairAndrew Manuel

President Obama lauds Indian-American Pranav SivakumarScroll.in

Historical Comparison

Person	Country	Milestone	Age / Stat
Cannan Huey-You	United States	Presenting research on a Milky Way gas cloud at the American Astronomical…	Age 11
Franklin Wang	United States	He pointed a machine-learning model at public telescope archives and six u	Age 17
Pranav Sivakumar	United States	Two years after losing a spelling bee on cyanophycean, he was hunting lens	—
Ana Humphrey	United States	First place, 2019 Regeneron Science Talent Search	—
Wolf Cukier	United States	Spotting TOI 1338 b, TESS's first circumbinary planet	—

What is documented — and what is not

✓ Documented

Aged 13 and from Tower Lakes, Illinois, at the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee (TIME)
One of the last two spellers; went out on cyanophycean after odontoloxia and haupia
One of 20 global finalists at the 2015 Google Science Fair
Project title: automated search for gravitationally lensed quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

? Unverified, disputed or wrong

Date of birth, school and family are not stated in any source used
The result of his 2015 Google Science Fair entry is not recorded in this material
A reported Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award at the 2015 fair is unverified here
Nothing documents his studies or work after 2015

Questions people ask about Pranav Sivakumar

How old is Pranav Sivakumar?

TIME described him as 13 in May 2013. No source used here gives his date of birth, so his current age cannot be stated.

What did Pranav Sivakumar do?

He reached the closing stages of the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee as one of the last two competitors, and in 2015 was named one of 20 global finalists at the Google Science Fair for an automated search for gravitationally lensed quasars.

Which word did he go out on?

Cyanophycean. TIME reported that he had the wrong root. He had already spelled odontoloxia and haupia correctly.

Who won the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee?

Arvind Mahankali, 13, of Bayside Hills, New York, on the word knaidel, a German-derived Yiddish word for a small dumpling.

Did he win the Google Science Fair?

Not according to any source used here. The coverage consulted was published before the finalists presented and records his place among the last 20, not the result.