Aliya Deri

Aliya Deri (born 1992) is an American college student of Indian descent and was the champion of the 2008 National Vocabulary Championship. She was also a runner up for the 78th Scripps National Spelling Bee at the age of 13. She was featured in the book American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds, ISBN 1-59486-214-1. Deri was initially homeschooled; then graduated from Amador Valley High School in 2009 and enrolled at Stanford University afterwards, majoring in computer science. She is currently pursuing a computer science PhD degree at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute.