Loudoun County Students Create Global Research Fellowship Program | WDVM25 and DCW50

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Virginia (WDVM) – Two high school students in Loudoun County have created a fellowship program that spans the world.

Kamran Majid and Rahul Kumar created ALUNA Research at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when they realized their extracurricular science and math activities would be canceled.

The two high school students wanted to put in contact other people interested in continuing their studies in the fields by being able to contribute their research to published scientific journals.

The scholarship program has expanded beyond Loudoun County, spreading to other countries such as Ghana, Egypt and India.

“It’s basically a scholarship where researchers who are high school students can collaborate with other high school students and do real science research,” Kumar said.

The scholarship allows students to conduct research in an area of ​​interest to them. ALUNA Research asks its fellows to read more prestigious papers written in universities to understand the material they will have to produce. The objective is to contribute to a new discovery in the scientific field before publishing it.

“We have research being published in prestigious high school journals and machine learning models published on medical imaging websites that hospitals can use,” said Majid.

Majid says the program has enabled fifty students to make an impact in their community. ALUNA Research is always looking for students to participate, and you can find this information on their website.