Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly one in six deaths, according to the World Health Organization (4). RAS genes (HRAS, NRAS, and KRAS in mammals) are the most frequently mutated oncogenes in human cancer and therefore, are considered one of the most important targets for anticancer therapy. (5). Acting as binary molecular switches, RAS genes alternate between a GDP (off) state and GTP (on) state. When in the GTP state, they transduce signals which regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, survival, and more (1).

After going to school in face masks during COVID-19, I began to contemplate their impact on human connection and how well people could recognize each other’s emotions behind the mask. My curiosity led me to investigate. In an online search, I discovered Dr. Felicity Bigelow’s study on facial emotion recognition in the scientific journal, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, and I was immediately captivated. Her research aligned perfectly with my own interests, so I decided to reach out to her with my idea for an independent research project.

In a world with climate deniers, scientists have been trying to uncover the most effective way to present the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change to audiences. “Climate stories” are personal accounts that have been used in recent years to engage more people in the global issue of climate change from an emotional perspective. There are multiple ways in which “climate stories” are presented. The present study explored the effects of audio, written, narrative, and informational climate change passages on the environmental decision-making levels of individuals.

In the summer of 2021, I got an email that would change my life. I’d been attending the UCLA math circle for almost a decade at that point, and I had a good relationship with the head of the program, Prof. Oleg Gleizer. But I was surprised when he sent me an email saying, “We may have a research opportunity at USC this Summer.” Prof. Salman Avestimehr of USC (University of Southern California) was doing research into distributed machine learning techniques, and he had reached out to Prof.

My mother was born behind the Iron Curtain in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The communist government stole her family’s belongings and forced them to work demanding physical labor jobs. Wishing for a better life, her family illegally fled across the border and immigrated to America in 1968. The communist government eventually fell in 1989 due to the Velvet Revolution, an anti-communist protest fueled by an economic downturn. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia’s first democratic elections established a new government that transformed the economy by moving company ownership from the state to private entities.

The introduction of computational techniques to analyze chemical data has given rise to the analytical study of biological systems, known as “bioinformatics”. One facet of bioinformatics is using machine learning (ML) technology to detect multivariable trends in various cases. Among the most pressing cases is predicting blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability. The development of new drugs to treat central nervous system disorders presents unique challenges due to poor penetration efficacy across the blood-brain barrier.

I was never a STEM-oriented person. I like to think it was because I had talent in another subject that took my attention away from STEM, but it was more likely due to the humbling experience of going to an academically challenging high school that turned my love for science and math into the stress of finishing mountains of homework and fear of failing back-to-back assessments. I couldn’t picture myself pursuing a career in STEM when I obviously wasn’t good at it … I bounced from subject to subject, taking various non-STEM-related classes to find my interest.

Music has been an integral part of my life. I began playing piano when I was two years old and percussion in fourth grade. As I progressed through elementary and middle school, I also developed a deep passion for math. When it came time to choose a research topic for the Al Kalfus Long Island Math Fair in eighth grade, I combined these two passions and investigated the connections between math and music theory.

The conditions of low-income living and the prevalence of discrimination have been long studied in African Americans; however, the Hispanic community has long been overlooked in this research, despite their parallel struggles with the pessimistic products of poverty. There is a knowledge gap in the study of adverse stimulation associated with incessant deprivation, bias, prejudice, and stereotypes applied to Hispanics/Latinos. This research focuses on how continuous struggles analogous to poverty affect the brain development and cognitive function of Hispanic children from Union City, NJ: the most densely populated city in the United States with the highest hispanic diaspora in the State of New Jersey.

The origins of my research project start in my 10th grade AP Biology class. My teacher was lecturing on DNA and its biological function for storing cellular information, which she described as analogous to computer storage. It was an interesting analogy that I expanded on with genes being “files” stored in the genome “hard drive.” I eventually began to wonder if it was feasible to use DNA directly for computer storage, as after all it must possess incredibly high storage density to be viable for its biological purpose.

I began my journey into research in 10th grade (2020). Covid-19 was the style du jour, masks were all the rage, and I was enrolling in a class at my school called Science Research. This class was meant to guide students, helping them reach out to experienced mentors in academia and industry. Initially, I was tasked with finding a broad area of study, for example, cancer, in which I could later specify and find a niche that fit me precisely.

I witnessed a sea of yellow-orange skies cast a haze over the nearby buildings. This was not Blade Runner 2049; this was yet another example of the cataclysmic impacts climate change can have on the planet we call home. The smoke from the wildfires in Canada had finally arrived in New York, sending my entire community into disarray. I felt my eyes burning as I walked out of the double doors of my school on what should have been a normal school day.