Progress Announces Recipients of Women in STEM Scholarships in US, Bulgaria and India

We’re thrilled to announce the 2024 recipients of the Mary Székely Scholarship for Women in STEM, the Women in Tech Scholarship in Bulgaria and the Akanksha Scholarship for Women in STEM in India.

All three scholarships make up our Women in STEM Scholarship Series, a program established in 2019 with the goal of helping young women advance their professional development. Since the launch of the series, a total of 14 women have received scholarships from Progress.

“Each year, we have the privilege of meeting passionate, intelligent young women who aspire to use their STEM skills to advance their communities and the tech industry,” said Yogesh Gupta, CEO, Progress. “This year’s recipients include a student who hopes to use AI to increase access to affordable housing, a scholar who developed a robot for cleaning solar panels and a creative who aims to design educational video games about the environment. Each recipient has admirable goals, and we are honored to play a small role in their academic and professional journeys – congratulations to all of these remarkable students.”

Keep reading to get to know our 2024 scholarship recipients and watch our video interview with each.

The Mary Székely Scholarship for Women in STEM 2024: Neidy Merida-Lopez and Emma Normand

Neidy Merida-Lopez and Emma Normand are this year’s recipients of the Progress Software Mary Székely Scholarship for Women in STEM, a $10,00 four-year renewable scholarship, which has historically been granted to one recipient each year. This year, Progress has made a unique exception and awarded the scholarship to two students.

Neidy Merida-Lopez

Neidy is a graduate of KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate in Lynn, Massachusetts. Neidy excelled in her AP classes, acted as an alumni ambassador for Global Glimpse, an organization committed to building a new generation of diverse young leaders and was a member of the National Honor Society (NHS) and National Ed Equity Labs Honor Society. Neidy also participated in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow competition where her team was declared Massachusetts State Winners for their work on medical discrepancies in sun protection across skin color. Neidy will be pursuing computer science at Vassar College in New York.

Emma Normand

Emma Normand, an avid coder and artist, is a graduate of Joseph Case High School in Swansea,MA who ranked in the top 10% of her class. Emma founded a Girls Who Code group for her school, thrived in her AP classes, received multiple academic achievement awards and was an NHS member. Emma will be majoring in computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

Women in Tech Scholarship Program 2024: Violeta Kastreva and Teodora Savcheva

Violeta Kastreva and Teodora Savcheva are this year’s recipients of the Women in Tech Scholarship Program in Bulgaria. Consisting of two annual scholarships worth BGN 3,000, the Women in Tech Scholarship Program was established for women in their second, third or fourth year at accredited universities.

Violeta Kastreva

Violeta is currently pursuing a computer science degree at the Faculty of Mathematics andInformatics (FMI) at Sofia University, where she is both a student and a teaching assistant, covering diverse subjects including Introduction to Programming in C++. In addition to being awarded Student of the Year for Mathematics and Informatics at FMI, Violeta received several medals at the Team Open Mathematical Olympiad for University Students and the Interuniversity Competition of Mathematics. Additionally, Violeta volunteered for UNICEF where she educated students on cybersecurity.

Teodora Savcheva

Teodora is studying intelligent systems and artificial intelligence at the Technical University ofSofia where she is part of the Robotics Club and has received numerous awards for her team’sSolar Reviver Autonomous Robot. In addition, she taught LEGO robotics, DEV Python and Data Science to children.

In addition to these two awards, Progress contributes to the scholarship program at theAmerican University in Bulgaria to support women working toward a degree in the computer science field. This year, our $8,000 donation was given to Blagovesta Blagoeva, a computer science and psychology major.

Akanksha Scholarship for Women in STEM 2024: Prarthana R, Nikita S Raj Kapini and Garnepudi Bhavika

The Progress Software Akanksha Scholarship for Women in STEM in India is a four-year, $2,000 per-year renewable scholarship awarded to an Indian woman pursuing an undergraduate degree in computer science, software engineering, IT and/or computer information systems. The Akanksha Scholarship has been awarded to two deserving students since its inception.

Prarthana R

Prarthana is a first-year information science and engineering major at the RV College ofEngineering, Bengaluru who already has a string of accomplishments, including the Vidyaniketan PU College Topper Award and qualifying for a prototype phase of the KSP Datathon for the Karnataka State Police Department.

Nikita S Raj Kapini

Nikita is a first-year student at the RV College of Engineering where she is majoring inengineering. An incredible student, Nikita is an NTSE scholar, a bronze medalist in DHBBC 2019-20 and was selected for the nationals in the INSPIRE Awards-MANAK 2019. Nikita also holds an international second rank in SOF IMO, a gold medal in the students' category at the International Innovation Fair 2019 and was the first girl from Davangere to win the AITA Talent Series in U-14. Additionally, she has been recognized as an NPTEL superstar.

Garnepudi Bhavika

Bhavika is pursuing a degree in engineering at the Siddhartha Institute of Technology, Kanuru.She has contributed to essay competitions on mathematics and maglev trains and participated in the “Programming for Problem Solving using C” workshop.

Our Women in STEM Scholarship Series is part of our Corporate Social Responsibility Program. With this series, we’re aiming to support the next generation of women in STEM around the world. We’re honored to have helped our past recipients in their academic pursuits, and we look forward to continuing to do the same for more young women going forward.