Saranesh Prembabu, an Indian American student who recently graduated from Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon, Calif., earned a gold medal at the 46th International Physics Olympiad in Mumbai.

Prembabu was named to the United States physics team with four other students throughout the country. The team was selected from among 20 team members to go to Mumbai for the Olympiad, which was held July 5 to July 12 (I-W, June 12, 2015).

All five of Prembabu’s team finished in the top 39 out of 262 participants.

Prembabu finished with a score of 28.7 in Theory and 13.6 in Experiment for a total score of 42.3 while earning the gold medal. His teammates Adam Robert Busis, Zachary Bogorad, Kevin Q. Li and Jason Lu finished in 10th, 15th, 36th and 39th place, respectively. All but Lu finished with a gold medal. Lu earned silver.

In addition to being named to the U.S. physics team and subsequently winning a gold medal, Prembabu, in March, won $75,000 for winning a second place innovation award in the Intel Science Talent Search in Washington, D.C.

He has also been named a National Merit Scholar finalist; was one of 20 National Society of High School Scholars selected to attend Nobel Week in Stockholm, Sweden; and won first place awards in regional high school science bowls in 2014 and 2015.

Prembabu initially was not interested in physics but “as I studied the subject deeper, I began to particularly appreciate it,” according to his profile on the Web site of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

“Now, physics is definitely one of my favorite areas of science. I often spend free time working on challenging physics problems,” he added.