Meet Pranati Mitta,
Pranati Mitta, a rising senior at Oswego East High school in Oswego, IL, enjoys incorporating her love for STEM and collaboration to help her community in various ways. Despite the obstacles the COVID-19 pandemic has created, Pranati persistently works hard to surpass them. For instance, in 2020, she co-founded a non-profit organization known as Art For Charity in order to raise money to help India during their COVID-19 crisis. Here, hand-crafted products were gifted to those who donated. Within this organization, she collaborated with volunteers across the country in order to unite and better her community. Additionally, Pranati participated in the Girls Who Code (GWC) Summer Immersion Program held in 2020 as well as Google’s InspireCS program held at Benedictine University in 2017. Here she continued to develop her passion for computer science. Pranati later applied the skills she learned in order to help create the nonprofit’s website. Additionally, she has been volunteering to remotely teach a Hindi speaking student in India how to speak English through the Spoken English Program (SEP). Here, Pranati creates a unique lesson plan each week for her student filled with engaging activities, worksheets, and games. Since both of these incredible opportunities have been remote, Pranati has worked tirelessly to ensure that everyone she works with has the opportunity to be as engaged as possible. Aside from these activities, she has been involved with in-school extracurriculars including Mathletes, Health Occupations Students of America, Educators Rising, National Honors Society, Science National Honors Society, and Oswego East’s Science Olympiad (where she and her school placed 2nd at State). Pranati also enjoys incorporating her leadership skills to better her community through her National English Honor Society Presidency at her high school. With these extracurriculars, she learned that her interest in science stems from her love for collaboration.
Aside from these activities, Pranati enjoys exploring her other interests including baking, singing, playing badminton, and teaching. From a young age, she has been developing her passion for baking by creating a variety of baked goods for events within her community. In 2017, she was selected to sing for District 9 of the junior chorus at the Illinois Music Education Association. Soon after, during her freshman year of high school, she was selected to participate in one of her school’s acapella choirs known as Ambiance. In school she enjoys playing badminton and competing with other schools within her district. Along with the SEP and Educators Rising, Pranati also develops her passion for teaching while working at Kumon Math and Reading Center. At her job, she works with students in primary through secondary education to help them gain academic skills. She hopes to continue to grow these passions as she graduates from high school and moves on to obtain her undergraduate degree.
This summer, Pranati is working alongside her partner Maria Protogerou and her mentor Dr. Vivek Srinivas in the Baliga Lab. They have worked to analyze bacterial transcriptomes of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis with differential gene expression analysis and DRonA (a machine learning algorithm) to study antibiotic-inhibited cell growth and antibiotic-induced cell death. With her journey thus far, Pranati is incredibly grateful to have worked with others at ISB to expand her passion in STEM which she will take with her to undergraduate school and beyond.
For any future interns or professional contact, please feel free to contact me with any questions at:
Email- pranati.mitta11@gmail.com