TAMPA, Fla. — As school districts across the state enjoy spring break, one Middleton High School senior in Tampa will be in Washington D.C.

Rudra Patel, 18, is representing his Florida peers at the 2025 National STEM Festival for the second straight year.

He is one of about 100 champions nationwide selected for the honor.

What You Need To Know

  • Middleton High School Senior Rudra Patel returns to Washington D.C. as national STEM Champion

  • Patel is participating in the 2025 National STEM Festival as one of Florida's top honors

  • He has also been selected to participate in the 2025 International Science & Engineering Fair

If you are not paying attention, Patel’s words will pass you by.

But his ideas are here to stay.

“What happens is that each electrode lobe starts getting each of the signals that’s going in her brain and all of these signals are sent to the AI model,” said Patel while explaining how his project PsycheMAP works. “It’s comparing what her signals are doing right now to the dataset and what it’s been trained on before and trying to compare if there’s any correlation with maybe depression or any other psychiatric disorder.”

This project, called PsycheMAP, earned him National STEM Champion honors for the state of Florida.

He will share his ideas with other champions at the 2025 National STEM Festival and hopes his artificial intelligence innovation will help.

“Because when you’re talking to the psychiatrist, maybe you have depression but you’re also having suicidal thoughts,” he said. “But if you’re not comfortable sharing you’re having suicidal thoughts, they might not be able to help you.”

He is also building on previous work.

He was inspired by a friend who is paralyzed, and Patel devised technology to help them.

That project earned Patel a trip to Washington D.C. last year for the same national STEM honors.

“I was thinking I could use what I was working on last year — the actual algorithms and stuff that I developed — and apply it here and see if it works,” he said. “And it turns out it’s something that is possible.”

As fast as he can talk, his mind is working about one hundred times faster, it seems.

His teachers think he can take on any challenge.

“I don’t see limitations at all,” said STEM program director Tonya Floyd. “Because I remember him as a freshman coming in and he hit the ground running.”

Tonya Floyd is the STEM program director at Tampa’s Middleton High School.

Students who are applying what they learn in books to real life are what make Middleton’s STEM program special.

However, Patel has a special spark his other classmates lean on.

“I think he inspires a lot of people to want to do more,” said Biotechnology teacher Patricia Dodson.

He is already thinking about what comes next. 

“Once I get there, I think there’s lots of ethical things that we need to think about,” he said. “I think those would be great discussions I would love to have with whomever I’m working with.”

Thinking beyond his trip to Washington with his vision set to a global audience.

Patel was recently selected to compete in the 2025 International Science & Engineering Fair with the same project, PsycheMAP.

Patel is at the top of his class at Tampa's Middleton High.

He has interviewed with about every top university in the country.

He is just now waiting to make his pick.