2023’s pageant powerhouses from the Indian diaspora: Combining pageantry, talent and social upliftment

nya Goyal[/caption]

Competing against top coders

The STEM enthusiast competed against the top coders from 50 countries at the prestigious European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics. She made use of her problem-solving skills to devise innovative solutions for the competition's challenges.

The contest consisted of two five-hour sessions, each featuring four complex algorithmic design and coding challenges. "Five hours go by very quickly and is not quite enough time," she said, talking about the tough competition.

According to EGOI rules, the implemented code must pass a set of sub-tasks within two to four seconds, requiring participants to excel in mathematics, creativity, and efficient coding under high pressure.

"Once I made to the team, I was fortunate to be part of the best team in the world,” Aanya said dedicating her medal to Team India's coaching and support staff. "When you have such support, there is no choice but to prepare well and fight for the full 10 hours, from the first minute to the last." Sonia Garcha was the leader of the Indian contingent.

[caption id="attachment_38878" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Team India at 2024 European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics held at the Netherlands[/caption]

Finding support in her father

The maths-loving teen has always had the backing of her father, Amit Goyal, a former maths Olympiad winner. During the Covid-induced lockdown, Aanya used the extended period at home to focus on her passion for mathematical problem-solving. She undertook a series of exams conducted by the UK Mathematics Trust (UKMT) to succeed in the tough selection process for the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO). That year, EGMO was hosted partly remotely in Georgia.

Every year, over 600,000 secondary school students across the UK participate in the UKMT challenges, with only the top 1,000 invited to the British Mathematical Olympiad. From this premier group, the top 100 are selected to advance to round two of the British Mathematical Olympiad which involves a three-and-a-half-hour competition featuring four challenging problems. Aanya earned a distinction and ranked among the top four girls chosen for the UK team for the EGMO, also becoming the youngest ever, breaking the previous record held by a 15-year-old.

Multifaceted teen

It's not just the mathematics and informatics Olympiads that Aanya has participated in; she has also competed in the Linguistics Olympiad. Just as she prepared herself to solve the toughest combinatorics and number theory problems, she applied the same mindset to deciphering linguistics.

[caption id="attachment_38883" align="aligncenter" width="694"] Aanya Goyal Team UK at the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad, held in Georgia in 2019[/caption]

“The Olympiad problems are all about being creative and digging deep. Sometimes, a problem can take many days to solve but it is all about not giving up easily and to keep coming up with new ideas,” she mentioned.  With EGOI, she embraced a new challenge that extended beyond problem-solving to problem design and implementation.

In her primary school years, Aanya was heavily into puzzles, crosswords, sudoku variants, and kakuro. In secondary school, she indulged in codebreaking, cipher challenges, chess, and linguistics. All these activities have been instrumental in developing her competitive skills.

Future goals – to make impact with maths and computer science

The 17-year-old plans to study mathematics and computer science at university. While maths remains her primary interest, she looks at computing and other applications of maths as an opportunity to work on some of the world’s problems and make it a better place.

"This is serious business for me and not a cliché. I am keen to have a career where I can utilise my skills to make a real impact. I also feel a certain weight of responsibility as a girl doing well in maths and computing Olympiads because sadly, when it comes to elite competitions in these subjects, men still comprise 95 percent of the field; that needs to change," she remarked.

Challenging mindsets

At 13, after becoming the youngest female to be selected for the UK team to compete at the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO), Aanya had remarked, “Many students do not give maths a real chance.” Holding adults responsible for instilling this mindset in young students, she had mentioned, “Adults keep repeating that maths is tough, and that is what people my age have heard all their lives, so some of them adopt it as a reality.” She added, “In England, adults constantly joke about being bad at maths, creating low expectations, so many students think it is okay to be bad at maths.”

Her advice to youngsters has been to keep on practising because not only does maths become easier through practice but also starts appearing as more exciting and rewarding. “But if you approach maths without confidence and without a real heart then it can become pointless and cold,” she remarked.

[caption id="attachment_38886" align="aligncenter" width="365"] Aanya Goyal[/caption]

Chak De! India

The London teen sees herself as ‘a proud Indian’ and finds motivation in songs like ‘Chak De India’ and ‘Ziddi Dil’ from the Bollywood biopics ‘Chak De! India’ and ‘Mary Kom.’ She listened to these songs to stay motivated during competition preparation. “India winning the T20 cricket World Cup and then the Indian IMO team finishing fourth provided additional motivation,” she remarked after bagging a silver for India last month.

To encourage more girls to be involved in designing the technologies of the future, the passionate STEM enthusiast aspires to serve as a role model to overcome societal bias by harnessing her skills and achievements.

• Follow Aanya Goyal on Twitter 

health," she said in an interview.

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It was the shelter-in-place order in Illinois that prompted her to come up with the idea. "When it hit, I thought about my grandparents, and how I couldn't meet them in person. I thought about how I spent so much of my early childhood going over to their house, especially weaving with my grandmother and painting with the grandpa," she added. Manya saw how happy her grandparents were when they got video and phone calls and wanted to share the same joy with as many senior citizens as possible. "I knew that I needed to create a program to facilitate my idea," she revealed, adding that it became a dining table conversation with her family who turned out to be her support system. They soon outlined goals and started reaching out to senior living facilities and their high school friends to build Lifting Hearts with the Arts.

In April 2020, it came into action with the mission to engage the community through intergenerational learning with the arts. "In youth, art helps foster creative thinking, boosts self-esteem, and establishes a sense of accomplishment. In adult populations, art can prevent cognitive decline by improving memory, reasoning, and resilience," reads their website.

Bridging the gap and community building

When Maya began her first virtual meetings with the residents, she was a little skeptical of breaking the ice with them. However, she realised that it was actually very easy. Sharing an experience, she said, "One day, I was hosting a trivia game for a group of 6 residents via Zoom, and we started talking about languages the residents took in high school. I told them that I was taking Latin, not expecting anyone to have taken it. It turned out that all 6 of them had taken Latin in high school," adding, "We started reminiscing about texts that we had all read in school, and they even offered some advice for translating some of Virgil and Caesar's texts!"

It was her parents in whom she found her first mentors, who guided her at every step. "My grandparents have been my biggest cheerleaders and were the organization’s first followers on Facebook," revealed Maya, who is currently studying at Princeton University.

Understanding its ramifications, they pair high school students with seniors at long-term care facilities for one-on-one and group activities to build long-term friendships on the basis of mutual interests. The activities include playing games, painting or drawing together, sharing cooking/baking recipes, or listening to music.

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Explaining one of the group activities 'Name that Tune' with the seniors, Maya said that volunteers play the first one minute of a song and the residents need to guess the name and artist. "Some of our high school volunteers weren’t sure what decade to play music from. After talking to several of the seniors, we found that 40s and 60s music was the most popular. In fact, I have found a new love for the musical jams of the 50s and 60s," she added.

Taking the next step

After its success during the pandemic, in the fall of 2023, CoGen Creations was yet another program that was introduced to "encourage open communication to counteract stereotypes and increase understanding between generations." Based on mutual interests and hobbies, it pairs ten high school students with ten senior residents at a local care facility in Chicago where they meet during an ice cream social or create a first art piece together. It gives them a chance to get to know each other better by engaging in a dialogue and by expressing themselves through dialogue. "The hope is that seniors and students might build long-lasting, intergenerational friendships that will enrich their lives."

In the last few years, Lifting Hearts with the Arts has been on a mission to use the arts to connect seniors and youth through virtual or in-person activities to build long-lasting friendships. Interestingly, the organisation is now expanding the program for college students too. "Finding common grounds with seniors has helped the volunteers develop empathy."

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