This 17-year-old student from West Bengal works as Research Assistant with Tesla

Age is only a number for Aparup Roy, a class 11 student from Zoom International School in West Bengal’s Durgapur. At 17 years of age, Roy is working with Tesla as a Research Assistant in its food printing project. 

He has also received a participation certificate from three space agencies such as NASA, ESA, and JAXA for addressing COVID-19 challenges on Earth in their EO DASHBOARD HACKATHON. He has written a research proposal titled ‘Development of Cow Dung using Herbal Ingredients based Mosquito Repellent’, as per his LinkedIn profile. 

He believes that mosquito repellents available in markets are laden with chemicals and can cause multiple health problems. Therefore, he decided to make an herbal version. Besides this, he has published two books– ‘Problems in General Chemistry’ and ‘Master ICSE Chemistry Semester’ – and three papers– ‘International Journal of Science and Research’, ‘International Journal of Scientific Research in Chemical Sciences’, and ‘Journal of Physics and Chemistry of materials’– in chemistry. 

All these were published when he was in class 10. In 2020, he secured an All-India Rank (AIR) 11 in ISRO Cyberspace Competition and AIR 706 in Vedantu Master Scholarship Test (VSAT). Moving on from Olympiad results and publishing research papers, how did Roy keep his love for chemistry alive in the trying times of the coronavirus lockdown? 

He performed several experiments at home including dissolving salt in the water to conduct electricity, for which he enlisted the help of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Roy told India Today, “When the lockdown was there, no one was allowed to go outside, so I was forced to do all my experiments at home.”

He added there are assignments that cannot be done at home and for this, he wrote to the Head of the Department of Chemistry at NIT Durgapur. Roy is now doing his research at a lab in NIT Durgapur. 

Roy secured Rank 1 in National Science Olympiad and AIR 482 in Byju’s National Aptitude Test for IIT-JEE Aspirants in the following year. The young scientist from West Bengal secured 95 per cent marks in his Class 10 board exams and is studying hard to secure a high rank in JEE and wants to join IIT Bombay in the coming years.

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