[1] She also a finalist in the 2014 international Stockholm Junior Water Prize with her project "A Novel Photocatalytic Pervious Composite for Degrading Organics and Inactivating Bacteria in Wastewater.

[6] Kurup's initial idea that won her the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist in 2012 is based on using a photocatalytic compound for water purification.

This project involved a photocatalytic composite made up of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, hollow glass microspheres, and Portland cement.

Exposure of the filtered water to sunlight with a photocatalytic composite disc resulted in 100% inactivation of total coliform bacteria in just 15 minutes.

Her father Pradeep Kurup, a civil engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, came to United States in 1983 from India.

In India, many of the children outside her grandparents’ house would be collecting dirty, unsanitary water in plastic bottles to use for drinking, cooking their food, and washing their clothes.