Shivani Sud, an Indian-American high school student, has won the Junior Nobel Prize for her project on cancer. She will get a scholarship of 1 lakh dollar from the Intel Foundation, which held the Intel Science Talent Search contest in the US.

The 17-year-old resident of Durham, North Carolina, was declared the grand prize winner for 2008 in Washington on Tuesday. Past winners of the competition have moved on to bag over 100 of the world’s most coveted science and math honours, including six Nobel Prizes.

Shivani’s project uses bioinformatics and genomics to identify stage-II colon cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and the best therapeutic agents for treating their tumours.

Shivani developed an interest in cancer research after doctors saved an immediate family member diagnosed with brain tumour.

“We were asked some challenging questions regarding our projects,” she said during the final round in Washington. She said she was looking forward to meeting, along with other contest finalists, President George W Bush and some senators on Capitol Hill.

Elizabeth Marincola, president of the Society for Science and the Public, which administers the competition, said they were proud to join with Intel in congratulating Shivani Sud and all of this year’s finalists.

In 2006, Shivani received a scholarship of 50,000 dollars from Davidson Institute for Talent Development. Daughter of Ish and Anu Sud, she is a student of Charles E Jordan High School. She also liked classical and modern Indian dance.

She plans to attend Princeton or Harvard, earn an MD or a PhD, and finally pursue a career in research. Besides Shivani, nine other students won prizes ranging from 20,000 to 75,000 dollars.

They were picked from 40 finalists announced last month in a competition that attracted about 1,600 high school seniors. “A high proportion of Indian-American finalists speaks well for the community, and we welcome their participation,” said Rick Bates, a spokesperson for the contest organisers.

“These 40 students show what American youth can do when they are encouraged to study math and science,” said Intel chairman Craig Barrett.

The competition, now in its 67th year, has been sponsored by the Intel Corporation for the last 10 years.