61st Annual STS (2001–2002)
Finalists
Samir Sur

MASSACHUSETTS
Samir Sur, 17, of Cambridge, entered the Intel Science Talent Search with a behavioral and social sciences project, in which he concludes that under certain conditions, noises can interfere with the perception of touch. He examined how the brain processes information it receives from our five senses, especially when two senses (hearing and touch) are stimulated in quick succession. In this study volunteers at the University of California, San Francisco, received two taps on the hand while hearing three beeps at varying millisecond intervals, yet they consistently reported that they had received three taps. The results of his study are being submitted as a short article to the journal Nature with Samir as the primary author. Samir is the son of Drs. Mriganka and Abha Sur. At The Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury, he plays varsity soccer, sits on the newspaper's editorial board and tutors students in math and science. He also teaches basic math at a Cambridge adult education center. Samir enjoys photography, sketching and reading, and he spent one summer working part-time at MIT as a web page developer. He hopes to attend Yale in preparation for a career in biomedical engineering.