AURORA | Spelling bees and science fairs don’t seem to have much in common at first glance, but what connects the two topics is what drives one Aurora seventh-grade student, Vedanth Raju, to work hard and help others.
On Tuesday, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman proclaimed March 25 “Vedanth Raju Day” in Aurora. During March, Vedanth won both the Denver Metro Regional Science and Engineering Fair and the Colorado State Spelling Bee.
He was honored by the mayor and former Aurora Quest K-8 alumnus and WNBA player Michaela Onyenwere during a full school assembly and celebration.
“I was so surprised when I got that word,” he said. “If you told me this as a kid, I wouldn’t believe it. I get my own day. That’s crazy. I’m still in shock.”
Vedanth said he loves spelling because he gets to be like a “word detective and piece together different roots and language patterns that he’s learned in the past.” His favorite languages he’s learned from are ancient Greek and Latin because he can find out a lot of words from those roots.
Although he’s not sure yet, Vedanth said he thinks he wants to be a medical doctor when he gets older, because he wants to help other people. It’s also helpful that most medical and science languages also have deep roots in Latin and ancient Greek.
“The part I love about science is it’s such a vast subject, and you can learn so many different things about it,” he said. “You can never know everything in science, and it can also be used in so many ways to help people. So I hope that in the future, with all the knowledge I’m getting, I can use that knowledge to help people.”
Vedanth won the science fair after creating a possible plant-based ointment for diabetic foot ulcers. He explained how he observed his grandfather, Chandra Shekhar Ayyar, using turmeric powder for a cut and was able to use that information, along with knowing that herbal remedies are successful and commonly used in India, to create a hypothesis for an herbal remedy that was beneficial for diabetic foot ulcers without the use of antibiotics.
His parents, Sandhya Ayyar and Srikanth, said his profound understanding and concise explanation of his experiment blew the judges away.
His love of spelling seemed to also be encouraged by family influence, after watching his older brother begin doing spelling bees when he was younger. His brother, Vikram, won second place in the National Spelling Bee in 2022.
Their parents said the only reason it was second place was because they had the two finalists race for the answer with a buzzer. Half of the fun both brothers have with spelling is in taking their time and using their knowledge to find the correct answer.
“I kind of wanted to follow in his footsteps,” Vedanth said about his brother. “I participated in the school spelling bee in second grade, and I got third. I was really surprised with the result, and I wanted to learn more about words, so I decided to participate in more competitions and try to learn more about words to become a better speller.”
Right now, he is studying six to eight hours a day on the weekends, and three to four hours on weekdays, along with keeping up with his homework.
“I don’t really like it particularly, but it is exhausting at times, but you just gotta cool off,” he said. “I love playing basketball, so I use that to blow off some steam.”
Although he is working hard, Vedanth has a lot of fun working out the spelling of words. When he is explaining the spelling of a word and mapping the different origins in his head, his face lights up, and he starts talking faster with excitement.
One time, when he covered his face on stage, his mother wondered why, and he later told her it was because he was so excited he knew the word he had to cover his smirk from the other contestants.
Now that he’s won the state spelling bee, he’s preparing to compete in the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee in May, in Washington, D.C. He said the whole family, even his grandfather, will be there to support him.
Vedanth’s parents said they are very proud of their son’s hard work, but they refused to take any credit for their son’s accomplishments.
Even his mom said she’s learned a lot about word roots and meanings because he has so much passion, like learning that diarrhea means “to flow through,” because “dia” means “through” and “rhein” means “to flow.”
What a kid and what a mind! I get not liking to study, but his threshold is way higher than mine was. For anyone who thinks immigrants do nothing for our society, I say hear this family’s success story and judge for yourself. My Mom’s family came from Czechoslovakia, and my great-grandpa and grandpa contributed a combined 60-year service to the Cedar Rapids, IA, fire department. It pales in comparison to what these kids will do, but we all need to be proud of immigrants’ contributions large and small!