At 16, Hamsa Padmanabhan had a minor planet 21575 named 'Hamsa', after her. She was then a second-year B.Sc student of Fergusson College, when she made a presentation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Lincoln lab for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fir (ISEF) in 2006. Today at 21, she is doing her post graduation in Physics from Pune University, after which she plans to do her doctoral research in theoretical physics.