What happened in 2024
The Society for Science, which runs the Science Talent Search, lists Rajaram first in its top ten for the 2024 competition. He was 17, a student at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and one of 40 finalists drawn from the several thousand seniors who submit research to the contest each year.
The project title recorded by the Society is Automatic Discovery of Visual Circuits. In the vocabulary of machine-learning interpretability, a circuit is a small sub-network inside a large model that carries out one identifiable step of a computation - detecting an edge, say, or a curve, or a face. Finding them by hand is slow work. Automating the search is the point of the project.
Why interpretability is the problem of the moment
Image models are trained, not written. Nobody programs the rule that separates a dog from a wolf; the rule emerges in millions of numerical weights, and afterwards no engineer can point to where it lives. Interpretability research is the attempt to reverse that opacity, to open a trained network and read what it built.
The stakes are practical. A model whose internal logic can be traced can be audited, corrected and trusted in places where a black box cannot. That a high-school senior produced a method in this field, rather than an incremental measurement, is what distinguishes the entry.
What the Science Talent Search is
The Science Talent Search is a research competition, not an exam. Entrants submit original work, usually a year or more of it, and are judged on the science itself and on their command of it under questioning from a panel of scientists in Washington.
The scale of the prize money is unusual for a school-age contest. The Society's own account of the following year's edition, the 84th, records $3.1 million awarded in all and $1.8 million shared among 40 finalists, with $250,000 going to first place. The pages used here do not state the 2024 figures, so no dollar amount is attached to Rajaram's win on this page.
What is documented, and what is not
Documented: the placement, the year, the project title, the school and the reported age of 17. Those come from the Society for Science's own listings of the 2024 top ten and finalists.
Not documented in these sources: the contents of his paper, the models he tested, his collaborators or mentors, his university destination, and anything about his family. The Society publishes placements and titles, not the research itself, and this page does not summarise a paper it has not read.
Where the first-place finishers tend to go
The contest has run since 1942 under a succession of sponsors, and its alumni roster is the reason a placement in it carries weight far beyond the prize: the competition is treated in American science as an early marker rather than a final verdict. Coming first at 17 opens doors; it does not settle a career.
For Rajaram specifically, no later step is recorded in the sources gathered for this page. Any site that states where he is studying now, or what he is working on, should be read with that gap in mind.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rishi Shiv Prasanna | India | Winning the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in 2023 at eight, for… | Age 0 |
| Cannan Huey-You | United States | Presenting research on a Milky Way gas cloud at the American Astronomical… | Age 11 |
| Ángela Olazarán Laureano | Mexico | An AI medical assistant built in Veracruz, designed to work where there is | Age 14 |
| Émer Hickey | Ireland | Co-winning the 2014 Google Science Fair grand prize | Age 16 |
| Achyuta Rajaram | United States | First place, Regeneron Science Talent Search 2024 | Age 17 |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- He placed first in the 2024 Regeneron Science Talent Search
- His project was titled Automatic Discovery of Visual Circuits
- He was 17 and attended Phillips Exeter Academy
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- The prize amount for 2024, which these sources do not state
- The contents and findings of the paper itself
- Any mentor, laboratory or institution behind the work
- What he is studying or doing now
Questions people ask about Achyuta Rajaram
How old is Achyuta Rajaram?
He was 17 at the 2024 Regeneron Science Talent Search, and his birth year is recorded as 2007. No exact date of birth appears in these sources.
What did Achyuta Rajaram win?
First place in the 2024 Regeneron Science Talent Search, the top placement in the oldest science research competition for American high-school seniors.
What was his project about?
It was titled Automatic Discovery of Visual Circuits - automating the search for the sub-networks inside AI image models that perform identifiable visual computations.
Where did he go to school?
Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire.
How much prize money did he receive?
The 2024 pages used here do not state the amount. The Society's 2025 press release records $250,000 for first place in that year's contest.
Where is Achyuta Rajaram now?
No source used here records his university or current work. Nothing after the March 2024 result is documented.
Is Achyuta Rajaram on Wikipedia?
He has no article of his own in the sources used here. His placement is listed on the Society for Science's own pages.
What is his IQ?
No IQ figure is reported for him in any source used here. The Science Talent Search judges research, not intelligence tests.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Achyuta’s story?
Where did Achyuta Rajaram place in the 2024 Regeneron Science Talent Search?
What does his project title, Automatic Discovery of Visual Circuits, refer to?
Which school did he attend?
Sources
- Regeneron STS 2024 (top 10) — Society for Science
- Regeneron Science Talent Search 2024 Finalists — Society for Science
- Regeneron Science Talent Search 2025 Awards More Than $1.8 Million to High School Seniors — Society for Science, 2025-03-11
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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