Founders & Faculty

Founder – Rajani Kopparapu

Rajani Kopparapu is the Founder of The Avant Academy. She is passionate about education and grooms kids to be leaders in their own ways. She believes every child has a potential to succeed and all they need is exposure to different opportunities and resources to learn and excel.

Her two children Kavya and Neeyanth are Harvard students who gained national and international accolades and awards. They were recognized in a variety of news outlets, including Forbes, CNN, ABC, WebMD, and major news channels in the US and in India.

She has counseled more than hundred middle and high school students to help pursue their passion by sharing resources, opportunities and laying a path for their success with Online Learning Programs in USA.

Rajani graduated with a Master in Computer science and is currently a Director at CapitalOne. She also leads as a Chair for the national NRIVA Educational committee and has served NorthSouth Foundation for more than a decade. She has met and been inspired by many accomplished leaders, including Vice President Biden, the Founder of AOL, Smithsonian’s President, the Founder of the Internet, the CEO of WebMD, the CTO of White House, and several others.

Kavya

Kavya is a Junior at Harvard University studying computer science and neuroscience. Kavya is the inventor of several award-winning medical and AI innovations, including a smartphone-based diagnostic platform for diabetic retinopathy and a precision medicine prediction platform for glioblastoma, and has patents pending. Her projects earned her one of TIME's Most Influential Teens of 2018, 2018 WebMD Innovation Hero award, Glamour Magazine's College Woman of the year. Kavya was a Teen Choice Award recipient for her work with her nonprofit organization, GirlsComputingLeague, which works to provide accessible emerging technology education to low-income students and young women. Since 2015, GCL has helped over 5,000 students and raised over $100,000 from Apple, Google, AWS, Intel AI, O’Reilly, NVIDIA and other companies. Kavya is also the President of Harvard CBE, a 90-student strategy consulting group at Harvard that works with major technology, life sciences, and sustainability companies with total market cap of $4 trillion this semester alone.

Neeyanth

Neeyanth is an incoming freshmen at Harvard University, studying statistics and artificial intelligence. In middle school, he won Virginia state MathCounts and national Math Counts at MIT. In high school, he was one of the captains of the Thomas Jefferson High School's Math and Senior Computer teams. He is a 5-time USA(J)MO qualifier and a USACO Platinum competitor. He has made models to diagnose Diabetic Retinopathy for low-income adults and more recently a Major Depressive Disorder prognosis system based on fMRI scans and Twitter feeds. His DR project won 3rd place at the International Science and Engineering Fair.

In the past 2 years he created PDGAN, a system that uses a mix of computer vision and deep learning algorithms to detect signs of Parkinson's Disease in MRI scans. This project was featured in Forbes and WJLA and was awarded the world’s most prestigious research scholarship as a Davidson Scholar and $25,000 scholarship.

He partnered with the Veterans Affairs Administration and created a NLP-powered Clinical Trial System that was featured on numerous DMV and government publications. He was invited to the 2017 Nobel Prize awards at Stockholm, Sweden.

Harvard Medical School MD MBA Coach

Coach is a current MD candidate at Harvard Medical School who has completed an MBA and MPH. While in high school, he was accepted to many Guaranteed Medical (BS/MD) programs including the prestigious Brown University PLME and Rice/Baylor MSP. He has been coaching undergraduate and high school students for over 8 years in the pursuit of medical school and BS/MD programs. His comprehensive services include MCAT strategy, resume analysis and guidance, essay editing, and interview prep.

AI Coach

Currently pursuing Ph.D Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught AI / ML to several hundreds of students. He believes in teaching AI/ML through developing hands on projects and helping students develop socially good projects. He inspires students to do their best and to make a difference in the world.

AI Coach

Graduated from Duke University, works at US Top Medical research center. He is a renowned International Bio Olympiad winner. In the past worked as a Quantitative analyst at Optiver and as as Software engineer at Facebook. He is interested in using computational approaches to understand the neural circuit-level mechanisms of behavior. He finds the intersection of machine learning and neuroscience especially compelling because these fields pose the most difficult intellectual challenges of our time and hold great potential for social impact. He is passionate about teaching artificial intelligence to young minds.

AI Coach

Student at Carnegie Mellon University with a major in Computer Science and Math. he won the USA Computing Olympiad competition and has worked as a Data Scientist. He interned at US Naval Research lab while in high school. He developed bundle list recommendation model for product categories with sparse data. He loves to teach young students Python and AI / ML.

Data Science Coach

Student at Harvard University with a major in Math and Economics with a minor in Government. Worked at Stride as Data Science intern and New York Times as research assistant. He won the 2017 Harvard-MIT Math Tournament and was 2020 Coca-Cola Scholar for academic achievement and leadership. He loves to share his passion with young minds.

Computer Science Faculty

Our Computer Science faculty is currently a Lab Director in the Computer Systems Research Lab at TJHSST. While at TJ, he mentored over 120 senior research projects, and has taught Artificial Intelligence, Probability Theory, Concrete Mathematics, Cryptography, Foundations of Computer Science in Python. Dr. White received Ph.D. in Computer science from Cornell University.

Our Math Faculty

Graduated with summa cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in mathematics (1988), received his Masters in Advanced Study with distinction from Cambridge University while on a Churchill Scholarship (1989), and received a Masters of Science from the University of Chicago while enrolled in the PhD program in mathematics (1990).

He enjoys playing music and has been a member of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra since 1997. He has been tutoring students in math since 1983, and since 2011 has been working with advanced math students on enrichment activities, both one-on-one and with group classes.

Our SAT/ACT Faculty

With a Ph.D in BioChemistry, graduating from Georgetown University Medical center. He has published 16 papers and a patent. He coaches students for TJ and AOS preparation along with ACT/ PSAT, SAT Math and English. His preparation guarantees 95% admission to TJ. Many of his students have received perfect scores in SAT and PSAT. He also coaches SAT Bio, AP Biology, AP Chemistry and honors Chemistry and Biology.

SAT/PSAT/ACT/ Subject Tests Faculty

SAT/PSAT/ACT faculty is a Humanities graduate from Yale University with 15 years of coaching experience. He has helped students gain perfect scores in ACT, PSAT and SAT. Many of his students have won the US Presidential scholar award which is given to 2 students per state. He has tutored several hundred students in one-on-one settings and taught several hundred more in group classes. He specializes in both standard test preparation (SAT, ACT, SAT Subject Test, AP Exams), for which he has written course curricula, and academic tutoring (literature, history, math, French, Latin). He spent the 2013-2014 academic year in Paris and London, homeschooling two fourteen-year-old American students traveling with their families. Prior to becoming a tutor, he served as the lead editor for the SparkNotes series of literature study guides. He is also a former Jeopardy! champion.

Debate Faculty

Our debate faculty are highly accomplished national debate champions. They have won top 3 places at most prestigious debate competitions at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, New York City Invitationals.

They are incredibly excited to teach elementary speech and debate, middle school parliamentary debate, high school debate such as Congressional, Policy, Public Forum and Lincoln Douglas.

Debate Coach

Student at Cambridge University, London. He placed 1st in the USA for Congressional Debate and was named Competitor’s Choice Champion at the Harvard Invitational. He is passionate about debate and motivates young students to be confident speakers.

Our English Faculty

Allyson is a summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vanderbilt University with masters in English Education from Syracuse University. She is National Board Certified Teacher for Early Adolescence/ English Language Arts and has been department chair at Loudon County middle school. She has presented at multiple local and state conferences on a variety of topics, as well as presenting nationally at the Conference on English Leadership and National Council of Teachers of English.

Our Biology Olympiad Faculty

USA Bio Olympiad and AP Biology faculty is a student at Princeton University, where she hopes to major in neuroscience. She is a 3-time USABO semifinalist, a 2-time Toronto Biology Competition international top 1%, and was captain of the TJHSST Biology Olympiad club. She has been recognized by the National DNA Day Essay Contest, the National Genes in Space contest, and currently conducts liver cancer research at Georgetown University.