Ayon Sen

Ayon Sen was born in Austin, TX and has lived there his entire life. A senior at Westwood High School, Ayon has focused on building a background for an eventual academic career in the sciences. He is a diploma candidate for the International Baccalaureate program at his school, and he participates in several different extracurricular activities, such as the Junior Statesmen of America, the International Baccalaureate Student Organization of which he is vice president, the Mathematics UIL, and the school orchestra program.

Ayon was chosen as one of the forty finalists in the 2008 Intel Science Talent search for a project in the field of earth sciences, specifically oceanography. He studied the contribution of a certain kind of friction acting at the sea floor to the ocean’s overall energy balance, and he explored how knowing the magnitude of this friction would contribute to our understanding of the Earth’s natural climate. Using principles of fluid dynamics and statistics, Ayon made the first quantitative estimate of how much energy is dissipated globally by this friction in the ocean. He conducted his research under the mentorship of Dr. Brian K. Arbic and Dr. Robert B. Scott at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Ayon was selected by his fellow finalists as the Glenn T. Seaborg Award recipient, for which he gave a speech at the awards banquet. He also participated in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology, ultimately winning 4th place nationally in the individual category.

Ayon has always been intrigued by the aesthetic qualities of mathematics and its applicability to nearly any field in the sciences. For this reason, he will be studying applied mathematics at Caltech this fall. In the future, he aspires to become a professor or researcher in the field of mathematics because he believes the creation of knowledge and the dissemination of such knowledge is the highest endeavor.

In addition, Ayon studied the piano privately, most recently under the tutelage of Mrs. Julia Amada Kruger. He won 1st place in the US International Duo Piano Competition and the solo division of the Debose National Piano Competition in 2007.

Ayon is the son of Dr. Mrinal K. Sen and Alo Sen.