2022 Governor's STEM Scholar: Shivam Syal ⁠

Shivam Syal is a senior in the electrical and computer engineering program at the Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies. He has conducted novel STEM research to improve assistive technology for people with disabilities including mental illness, deafness, and postural dysfunction.

He was an oral finalist and placed third at the New Jersey Junior Sciences and Humanities Symposium for his osteoporosis prevention research. He recently attended an eight-week research internship at Stanford University, focusing on improving NLP model tokenization for educational applications to help intellectually disabled people. His primary research interests lie in improving Assistive Technology using computer science and biotechnology.

Outside of research, Shivam is working to build an inclusive society through his community involvements. His nonprofit Speak2Lead provides public speaking classes for youth to become effective communicators, leaders, and advocates. His nonprofit STEMNinjas promotes STEM equity by providing free tutoring services and has grown to nine chapters across five countries. Shivam is president of the Technology Student Association (TSA) at his school and has won state/national awards at TSA conferences. Shivam has received the President’s Volunteer Service Gold Award and the Congressional Award Gold Medal. Shivam aspires to pursue management/technology studies to address social inequalities.⁠

We congratulate Shivam!