19 May 2009
Young Women Again Win Top Awards at International Science Fair
Students from 56 countries compete for awards, scholarships each year
Washington — After entering and not winning the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2008, Tara Adiseshan described her project, which dealt with a fungus fatal to amphibians, and what motivated her. “From a very young age, I have loved animals. Sometimes I feel like I have been born with a mission to save animals! As my passion for science grew, I decided that I wanted to use science to help animals instead of using animals to help science,” Tara said in an interview with Cogito, a Web site for young people interested in math and science.
Now 14 and engaged in a new but related project that illuminates the interaction between evolutionary and ecological relationships, Tara was one of three young women to win top honors and a $50,000 college scholarship at the 2009 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), which took place May 10–15 in Reno, Nevada.
This year, 1,563 young scientists from 56 countries competed for more than $4 million in scholarships, tuition grants and scientific field trips at the fair, which the Intel Foundation presents in partnership with the Society for Science & the Public.
Contestants are high school students who earn the right to compete by winning a top prize at local, regional, state or national science fairs worldwide. Participants included Brazilian Bruno Oliveira Buzo, who developed an inexpensive sunscreen using a South American plant extract to reduce the incidence of skin cancer among low-income populations. Kin Israel Notarte, Karina Louise de la Cruz and Jamie Mananquil from the Philippines examined the effect of marine algae on the mitotic inhibition of sea urchin embryos in an effort to identify potential anti-cancer compounds.
“The real end point of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair is to elevate the recognition of achievement of the younger generation in academic and learning exercises,” said Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel Corporation, which has been a major sponsor of the fair since 1997. “I hope that more young people will look at these students and realize they can be recognized for using their brains. You don’t have to be a quarterback, a basketball player or a baseball player to be recognized by your peers and the public.”
Li Boynton, 17, won top honors for creating a means of detecting environmental contaminants through the use of bioluminescent bacteria.
“I wanted to develop a biosensor that was very cheap and economical because I wanted Third World countries and countries that don’t have access to more expensive or sophisticated facilities and devices to be able to use this biosensor to improve the problem of water toxicity in the world today,” said Boynton, who is from Bellaire, Texas.
Asked what attracted her to science, Boynton said, “The thing about science is that it’s always changing and it’s innovative so I’ll never get bored with it. It’s always at the cutting edge of what’s going on. That’s what I love about it.”
The third winner was Olivia Schwob, 16, who investigated a type of learning in roundworms that has implications for human learning and mental disabilities.
“The implications it has are really great,” said Schwob, a junior from Boston. “The gene that I caused to express is GAP 43, and GAP 43 has been really dramatically implicated in learning for humans to the extent that if you remove one allele of it you get really severe mental retardation. … So anything you learn about the gene here can be applied really reliably to humans for treating, preventing, even curing those sorts of diseases.”
Tara Adiseshan’s project identified and classified the evolutionary relationships between sweat bees and the nematodes (microscopic worms) that live inside them.
“Basically, sweat bees are hosts and nematodes are symbionts that live inside the sweat bees. And because these two have such ecologically intimate relationships, I was intrigued to see whether they had evolutionary relationships as well,” explained Adiseshan, who is from Charlottesville, Virginia.
How did she find a lab to work in and a mentor with whom to work? As a 13-year-old, she said, she contacted “practically every scientist within a 100-mile [161-kilometer] radius.”
For her new project, she said she “was lucky enough to find a graduate student who was going to train me in all the equipment and answer all the questions I had.”
Asked her advice for other young people interested in research, Adiseshan told Cogito: “Do not give up — there were many times during this project where I felt I was going nowhere … and then, with some unexpected twists, it started to reveal its results! For example, during my microscopy work, I was not able to stain my specimens properly. I was not able to get the right concentrations or staining time. After much hard work, however, I stumbled upon the correct settings and was able to obtain great pictures.”
Students competing in the fair are doing serious science. More than 20 percent of those who entered the fair in 2009 have applied for a patent for their work or intend to do so, according to Intel.
Video interviews with the winners are available on the Intel Web site. Read more about the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair on the Society for Science & the Public Web site.
