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WAUKEE, Iowa – Five local young minds will be heading to the nation’s capital to compete in the 2024 National Science Bowl (NSB) competition.

Krish Joshi, Neil Nallabirudu, Ishani Atluri, Adwaiyth Muthuranam and Evan Midtlyng are eighth grade students at Timberline School in Waukee. They recently won the regional Science Bowl competition and will head to Washington, D.C., on Thursday to participate in the national Jeopardy-style tournament.

An all-day round-robin competition next Saturday will have them competing against some of the brightest minds in the nation. The competition will include difficult questions surrounding biology, chemistry, earth and space sciences, physics and math.

“You need to study, most importantly,” said Midtlyng. “We read textbooks and do research, and all of that is really important so that we actually know what the answers to the questions are.”

Midtlyng is the captain of ‘Team Timberline’ and told WHO-13’s Katie Kaplan that the students spend roughly 15-hours a week prepping.

Current coach and longtime science teacher Julie Stevens said the same group won regionals last year and has been working hard to get back to nationals again in 2024.

“We’ve been practicing, really, all year,” she said. “We started once a week practice up until the Iowa competition. And now that we won that, and we get to go on to D.C., we’ve been practicing twice a week.”

The national competition, which sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), draws thousands of middle and high school students. The top two middle and high school teams will win $5000 for their schools’ math and science departments. Other schools placing in the top 16 in the National Finals will win $1,000 for their schools’ science departments. The national event consists of several days of science activities and sightseeing, along with the competitions, according to a release.

Here are the impressive biographies for Waukee’s bright young students:

Evan:
Evan Midtlyng is an eighth grader who would like to attend college at Die Freie Universtät in Germany to study computer science and or mathematics. He likes gaming, programming, and retro computing. He ‘enjoys’ math, science, and German. He has not yet been out of the country. He also has a sponge brain that absorbs information.

Ishani:
Ishani Atluri is an eighth grader who’s favorite school subjects are math, science, and history. She participates in science bowl, sports, and more. In her free time, she also likes to travel and play sports like volleyball, track, tennis, and more. She also has experience in robotics and her team made it to the FLL World Competition this year. In the future, Ishani wishes to go to medical school and become a neurologist or cardiologist. In her free time, she also likes to travel and play sports like volleyball, track, tennis, and more.

Adwaiyth:
Adwaiyth Muthuraman is a eighth grader whose favorite subjects are Math, Science, and Social Studies. In his free time he enjoys playing basketball. He also is in clubs at school such as Science Bowl. After high school he is interested in going to medical school, specifically Harvard University. He also likes to learn robotics and mechanisms in machines. Adwaiyth has lived in countries such as India and The United Kingdom and now lives in the United States. He also cannot wait for the frozen ice cream in Nationals.

Krish:
Krish Joshi is an eighth grader whose favorite subjects are math and science. In his free time, he enjoys playing basketball. He has experience in robotics as he participated in a robotics league and made the state competition. He has also participated in Quiz Bowl and Math Counts. His favorite branch of science is biology, and he might go into biology in the future.

Neil:
Neil Nallabirudu is an eighth grader who likes math and science. In his free time, he likes to play tennis & basketball. He is interested in robotics and coding, and in 2023, he participated in First Tech Challenge. He is in different clubs like Quiz Bowl, Science Bowl, and MathCounts. He likes astronomy and space science, and in the future, he would like to become an astrophysicist.