Rising tenth grader, Reanna Bhuyan Patel received exciting news in March 2026: the Princeton Day School student was chosen as one of the 55 students to receive an expense-paid trip to the National STEM Festival in Washington, D.C. The 2026 cohort represents students from 47 states and four U.S. territories, developing solutions that span critical areas such as healthcare, energy, and emerging technologies.
The event is hosted by EXPLR, an organization that pushes students in grades 6-12 to build durable, employer-relevant capabilities through experiences. And Reanna is doing just that with her initiative, Infini-TE.
Infini-TE is a versatile, efficient, and novel innovation capable of generating electricity through capturing and harnessing ambient waste heat in urban, industrial, and natural sources around communities. Infini-TE strives to provide an option that turns energy into something infinite and abundant, while still remaining efficient and consumer-based, thus eradicating dependency on grids, growing resilience to natural disasters, and providing all communities easy access to clean energy.
Her inspiration for this project stemmed from her local Princeton community.
“The Princeton community has been a great source of inspiration for me when it comes to pursuing my passion for science. Within this community there is so much scientific exploration going on,” shared Reanna. The Princeton community is a driving force of pioneering net-zero energy technologies, with projects like Net-Zero America. More information on this initiative can be found at netzeroamerica.princeton.edu.
While her community sparked the idea for Infini-TE, her school fostered the ideas. The school itself offers a great focus on science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics (STEAM) courses of study, providing nearly 80 courses within these fields in the Upper School.
Reanna’s father, Riten Patel, shared, “We have certainly been fortunate to get guidance [from PDS]. The school has really emphasized on the why of people, and Reanna was able to find that element in the science, the discovery, the creativity, which was supported.”
The young scientist continued: “Princeton Day School is a great resource for my innovative endeavors. I came to PDS with this spark of how can I turn waste heat into clean energy, and the science chair took me through the process of how to do research, how to do experimentation, and take a small idea [and turn it] into a large, impactful innovation.”
Through the science chair, Reanna developed her innovation into a tangible piece of technology that she is now sharing with the community. Starting June 2025, she participated in the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, which includes an exclusive summer mentorship with a 3M scientist. This mentorship allowed her to further develop her ideas into what she now entered to the National STEM Festival.
Reanna joins the Festival June 24-27 as the New Jersey finalist. “It’s really exciting to meet this community of young innovators looking to make a difference.”
This Princeton student’s project and the projects of all others attending the National STEM Festival provide a glimpse into the brilliance this age group already exhibits.
