You are no topper! What good could you be at this school?

Hailing from a small town in West Bengal, Aishwarya was just like any other average student at her school.

She had an immense interest in Astrophysics and Astronomy; she loved stargazing, and would often ask for her teacher's guidance while participating in any Science Fair or to create more opportunities at school to let them stand out from just mere marks in exams.

However, most of her teachers would say, "You are no topper! What good could you be at this school? You better study hard and get better grades first."

Aishwarya's mother always had faith in her passion, she would suggest that she never should give in to those teachers' insults. While pursuing her graduation in Burdwan University, in the midst of her second semester, the Covid Pandemic led to the tedious lockdown period.

While most students got pulled away from studies, towards web series, indulging in laziness; Aishwarya spent her leisure time focusing more on the depth of Astrophysics.

In March 2021, International Astronomical Search Collaboration introduced a program on Asteroid Search, calling out to all the budding citizen scientists around the world to come up with new discoveries across the Main Asteroid Belt and near Earth objects.

Aishwarya came to know of the competition, she tried to contact her teachers to help her make a team and guide them in winning the competition, but in vain. Regardless, she decided not to give up, she contacted two of her old friends and the three of them made up a team with the name : Burdwan Globe Products

They joined in several online courses from renowned institutes,thoroughly studied the dataset provided by the IASC & the NASA Cooperative Agreement , and carried out several researches with the help of the astrometrica software (the licence and password to which were provided to us by IASC); finally after several sleepless nights and days of detailed research, they came up with two new asteroids named GL00020 and GL00036;we submitted the research data to the IASC team .

On 21 July, 2021 , Aiswarya received a confirmation from IASC in association with NASA that according to the proper data analysis by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, the data submitted by her team was given proper recognition and their discovery was validated by the IASC and NASA. That moment felt like a bolt from the blue to Aishwarya.

She realised

True efforts pay off!

Aiswarya received a certificate of recognition and prestigious prizes from the IASC in association with NASA; Aiswarya, along with her team got featured in several News channels and Newspapers.

At present, Aishwarya is an intern student at the IAU office of Astronomy for Development. She & her team is now focused on coming up with numerous other innovations .

Aishwarya's message to everyone who wishes to pursue a dream,

If you're willing to be dedicated towards your goal, success definitely finds its way to you. Don't let your grades define you.