Tanvi GanapathyBaliga Systems Education Experiences

Tanvi Ganapathy

Lakeside School – Bellevue, Washington
Class of 2022
Tier 2 Course: Computational Modeling – Cohort 1

Tanvi Ganapathy is a current senior in high school from Washington state. She hopes to be a researcher, unraveling the mysteries of health and biology using computational techniques.
She is a current intern at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center working with the Matsen Lab to build a new framework for reconstructing evolutionary trees. This work will help manage big data in phylogenetics and provide insight into the efficacy of vaccinations over time. During summer 2020, Tanvi was an intern at Cartogram, a Bellevue, WA company creating applications to improve hospital navigation.
This summer, she participated in ISB’s Computational Modeling workshop. She extended these techniques to additional research projects, studying the effects of climate change on snowpack and temperature in Mount Baker which was presented at the University of Washington, as well as analyzing accuracy and data collection methods in a long-term study of Coal Creek. Tanvi develops her interest in climate activism and STEM as her school’s robotics leader and member of the youth leadership team for the Seattle Youth Climate Action Network. Tanvi is a Clean Water Ambassador with King County and she helped organize a Green Seattle Day restoration site and create an online infographics experience to share the impact with the broader community. Partnering with her peers, she built the NetZero interactive simulation that modeled energy production and consumption, demonstrating the benefits of sustainable daily-living choices.
Furthermore, Tanvi is a proponent of diverse perspectives in STEM. She believes that STEM is a valuable aspect of any student’s education in today’s world and hopes to remove barriers to entrance into the field. She pioneered a Computational Thinking Workshop, partnering with Black Girls Code and the Pacific Science Center to run a pilot program which attracted participants from across the country. The program was successful, and Tanvi won several awards to continue this work, including a GirlUp STEM Grant, the National Center for Women and Information Technology Aspirations in Computing National Honorable Mention, and the NCWIT AspireIT Impact Award.