Two recent Jesuit High School graduates were named Davidson Fellows for their remarkable projects in ophthalmology and hospital-acquired infections. Vladimir Mamchik ’23 and Samyak Shrimali ’23 are two of only 21 students across the country to be awarded a Davidson Scholarship. The program recognizes gifted students 18 and under whose projects in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature and music have the potential to benefit society. Samyak and Vladimir are two of only 21 students across the country to be awarded a 2023 scholarship, which is widely considered one of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarships in the U.S.
Vladimir won a $25,000 Davidson scholarship for his project, Dynamic Extraocular Filtering: A Novel Method for Active Correction of Color Vision Deficiency, validated with Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials. Motivated by his personal experience with color blindness, Vladimir developed a method that significantly increases color contrast and has the potential to be a new clinical standard for color vision correction. Vladimir will be a freshman at Stanford University this fall and plans to study human biology with a focus on neuroscience. He aspires to be an ophthalmologist and vision neuroscience researcher.
Samyak earned a $10,000 scholarship for his project, CareHAI: A Novel Automated Artificial Intelligence and Sensor-Based Multi-Modular System for Early Diagnosis and Prevention of Hospital Acquired Infections. After his mother contracted a hospital-acquired infection, Samyak created a prevention tool that tracks and enforces hand hygiene compliance in health care settings as well as an early-diagnostic tool that uses patient data and medical history to prevent serious infections. Samyak is a freshman at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign this year, where he will major in computer science.
“The Davidson Institute's mission of ‘holistically’ supporting our youth ‘so they may reach their highest potential’ is Ignatian at its core. Vladie and Sam have both pursued projects that are deeply personal to them – they each saw a need in the world and found a way to change it through hard work, passion, and creativity. I am so proud of them for truly being young men with and for others,” said Dr. Lara Shamieh, Director of Student Science Research and biology teacher at Jesuit High School.
This is the first time that two Jesuit students have won Davidson Fellows Scholarships in the same year. Last year, Alan Ma ’23 won a $25,000 Davidson Scholarship for developing a smart wildlife sentinel to prevent wildlife-vehicle collisions.
“The innovations and new thinking added by each class of Fellows serve as an inspiration for future scholars to apply novel technologies and groundbreaking ideas to solve the world’s most difficult problems,” said Bob Davidson, founder of the Davidson Institute.
Congratulations to Vladimir and Samyak for this outstanding accomplishment.