ORNL Interim Director Jeff Smith, left, congratulates Nia Maheshwari on being named recipient of the 2023 UT-Battelle Scholarship. She is the daughter of Ketan, right, and Archana Maheshwari. Ketan Maheshwari is an engineer in ORNL's Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate.
Nia Maheshwari, a recent graduate of Farragut High School, has been named recipient of the 2023 UT-Battelle Scholarship to attend the University of Tennessee.
The competitive scholarship is awarded annually to a graduating senior planning to study science, mathematics or engineering at UT and who has a parent employed by UT-Battelle, managing contractor of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The scholarship is renewable for up to four years and is worth a total of $20,000.
Maheshwari is the daughter of Archana and Ketan Maheshwari of Knoxville, Tenn. Ketan works in the Data Lifecycle and Scalable Workflows group in the National Center for Computational Sciences at ORNL.
Nia Maheshwari’s awards and achievements include receiving a full scholarship to the Governor’s School of Emerging Technologies in 2021, honors in several academic competitions including the Science Olympiad, and serving as president of the Farragut High science club. She played flute in the band, has a black belt in American Martial Arts and runs a local art business — Henna by Nia.
Maheshwari’s competition essay focused on a tool she plans to design called Wave Vision Glasses, which would enable the wearer to visualize waves in the electromagnetic spectrum not detectable to human eyes.
“In helping the wearer ‘see’ high-energy waves such as gamma rays, [Wave Vision Glasses] can lead to safer practices in the study of nuclear energy and the construction of nuclear equipment,” she wrote in her essay, in which she also described advantages in law enforcement, emergency response, observing nature and helping the disabled and elderly.
Maheshwari has already been accepted to UT’s Tickle College of Engineering with chancellor’s honors and is a recipient of the Volunteer Scholarship and Hope Scholarship for Undergraduates.
UT-Battelle manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
