Climate change is the greatest existential threat to humanity. Throughout high school, I have connected myself to a massive global movement of youth fighting to change this. Over the past four years, I have dedicated my time to pursuing policy solutions to environmental issues and spearheading climate education initiatives in my local community, as well as at the national and global levels. Through these projects, I’ve engaged with other inspiring activists and learned the importance of collaboration and leadership - especially among young people whose futures are most impacted by global warming. When it came time for me to conduct my own research study in my senior year of high school, which I later submitted to Regeneron Science Talent Search, there was no question in my mind that I wanted to explore the social and political dimensions of climate change.

Sensitive crop regions are constantly under environmental stresses that foster plentiful plant disease. Basil plants, for instance, have been victims of Fusarium oxysporum (F.o.) wilt for decades, where growth conditions have stimulated progression of this disease, and subsequent crop destruction. A simple and effective treatment that would eradicate F.o wilt, while promoting overall plant growth, is needed. Metallic nanoparticles (NPs) have shown to improve plant health and overall crop yield, due to systemic movement through the plant’s root system, where the nutritional value of metallic nanoparticles is fully realized. This research investigates whether the “foliar-spray” application of NPs of copper, manganese, and zinc (as oxides) increases the growth rate and crop efficiency of healthy O. basilicum plants, and inhibits the adverse effects of F.o., to ultimately devise an easily-applied, simple, and effective treatment to promote increased crop growth. Pre-grown (3") basil plants were first transferred to ~0.8L pots using ProMix-BX soil, which was pre-inoculated with 1-2ml of 1g/L-F.o in water. Each plant was then treated with ~2ml foliar spray of the respective nanoparticles. After 6 weeks growth, all three MO-NP treatments produced significant increases (>120%) in biomass, relative to diseased plants; ZnNPs were the most favorable, at 180% increase in biomass relative to untreated, diseased plants. Combined Cu-Zn NP treatment enhanced diseased plants’ biomass by 29% and provided a 40% increase in height. Most importantly, diseased-plants outgrew healthy controls by 21%, highlighting the treatment’s ability to fully suppress F.o., so that infected plants grow beyond normal, healthy conditions.

One of the best presents I have ever received was a book entitled Girls Think of Everything on the day of my fifth grade graduation. Girls Think of Everything chronicles various women who have made world changing scientific discoveries. This book inspired my clueless, ten year old self to one day have such an impact on the world. Thus my passion for research began and has continued to influence my high school and college interests. During high school, I worked on two main research projects. I began the first project as a freshman in high school and studied the effects of synthetic estrogens on human health as well as the environment. The second research project used a theoretical chemistry approach to investigate the Marcus Model and in vivo electron transfer … During a shopping trip, I was tasked with buying baby bottles for my pregnant cousin. While looking at the different options, I noticed that some bottles were labelled BPA Free and some were not. I was not sure what BPA meant, but after a quick internet search I learned that it is an acronym for bisphenol A, an endocrine disrupting compound that has been linked to cancer, developmental issues, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. I was surprised to discover that BPA is not only present in baby bottles but is a common ingredient in many consumer goods including polycarbonate plastic (e.g. reusable water bottles), epoxy resins, receipt paper, eyeglasses, and compact discs. The compound’s ubiquity has also led to environmental contamination, especially in bodies of water …

A progressively neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer’s disease presents a serious emotional and physical cost to patients and their families today. In industrialized countries, the increasing overall age of the population creates a large group of people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease, so it is imperative that a cure is developed soon. However, new treatments are often too large in size to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and thus do not localize to regions of the brain well. Nanoparticles offer one potential solution to this problem. The extremely small size and high targeting accuracy of nanoparticle vectors allow them to deliver therapeutic molecules to a treatment site without compromising surrounding tissue . . . In this project, solvated models of the cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) capsid were developed to identify its possible therapeutic values in Alzheimer’s disease. Using molecular dynamics simulations, the CPMV capsid proteins were shown to interact with a combination of tight-junction protein ZO-2 (a BBB protein) and vimentin (a protein found in Alzheimer’s plaques); a combination of tight-junction protein ZO-2, vimentin, occludin, and vinculin (two other BBB proteins); vimentin alone; and a combination of vimentin and beta-amyloid (another protein found in Alzheimer’s plaques), without overheating the systems. A Ramachandran plot and contact maps were used respectively to verify the secondary structure of the CPMV capsid proteins and location of interactions within the molecular systems.

For visualizing the simulated electron-transfer (ET) dynamics with enhanced depth perception, I further built an immersive visualization system using a commodity virtual-reality platform and a game engine. My immersive simulation results reveal novel nonequilibrium phase transitions with which Shewanella efficiently responds to a change in its electrochemical environment. These results shed useful light on boosting the efficiency of Shewanella-based microbial fuel cells by increasing the ET rate, in order to produce electricity and water from sewage toward solving the global energy and environmental problems.

I came across an article on organic solar cells during the my time in the Garcia Research Program at Stony Brook University this past summer and was instantly fascinated by the versatility and possible uses of these devices. Imagine abundant, cheap solar cells being integrated around the world! Intrigued by the idea of using plastics to capture solar energy, I did more research into this technology. After thorough reading, I found that a significant limitation of these devices was the narrow range over which they could absorb light. I wanted to investigate enhancements to the self-assembled organic solar cell system to increase the potential of these devices. Recalling that I had studied in AP Biology how the presence of multiple types of pigments in plant leaves maximized photosynthesis, I decided to incorporate multiple donors into the solar cells after reading about similar blends in various research papers that improved device performance.

I began researching how mutations occur within cells. I focused on using computational chemistry techniques to advance the study of cancer prevention by analyzing protein kinases for therapeutics. I chose to study the NF-kappaB protein family because dysregulation of the NF-kappaB pathway has been linked to various cancers and autoimmune diseases. After reading literature about the protein family, I discovered that the NF-kappaB pathway is composed of two paths. I learned that, while the classical pathway is well-known, the alternative pathway is not. NIK, the NF-kappaB Inducing Kinase, plays a central role in this pathway, so I decided to employ molecular dynamics simulations to study NIK. I chose to use molecular dynamics simulations since they enhance the ability to analyze NIK at the molecular level, which offers important insight into its structure-behavior properties.

Ever since I was little, my parents have constantly taken me to the Museum of Natural History in New York City. As soon as I rushed through the old wooden doors of the building, I rushed past the dinosaurs, down the stairs, and ran down the hallway to find myself standing in front of the gigantic blue whale. Marine creatures have always inspired me; they’re always out of sight, yet so fascinating . . . Rising sea level, in conjunction with climate change, has the potential to lead to significant societal disruption over the next century. With the global mean rate of increase in relative sea level (RSL) at 1.7 mm/yr, which is predicted to accelerate to 3.88 mm/yr over the last decade of the 21st century, can lead to destructive effects- not only the obvious harms such as flooding. In fact, saltwater intrusion is a large implication for contamination of sources of drinking water; irrigation is thus also potentially affected, with large amounts of farmland becoming useless as RSL increases (Hartig, Kolker, Mushacke, & Fallon, 2002; Rice, Hong, & Shen, 2012). Further understanding of RSL is therefore required for improved preparation and mitigation strategies for potential consequences of increased RSL (Shepard et al., 2012).

Climate change involves complex interactions and changing likelihoods of diverse impacts (IPCC, 2014). In recent decades, changes and variations in climate impacting global agriculture sustainability and food security has been an important concern for our Earth family. Based on my summer internship in the Global Environment and Natural Resources Institute (GENRI), George Mason University, I was luck having the opportunity for working on analysis of climate change and assessment of climate impacts on agriculture under the supervision by my research mentor.

Recent experimental studies have shown how the quantum mechanism of electronic coherence is essential in the efficient energy transfer systems of the photosynthetic FMO complex found in green sulfur bacteria [1-3]. The FMO protein structure consists of a central magnesium atom surrounded by three identical monomers, each embedded with seven bacteriochlorophyll chromophore molecules, with an eighth additional bacteriochlorophyll chromophore between each of the three monomers [4]. The FMO acts as a mediator, efficiently facilitating the energy transfer from the light-harvesting antennae, known as chlorosomes, to the reaction center where the energy conversions of photosynthesis take place.

When I was in the third grade, ten years ago, my mother constantly felt dizzy and tired. She finally sought medical attention and her blood was drawn for testing, but it wasn’t until a week later that she was told that her hemoglobin levels were so low that she had to go to the hospital immediately. After a stressful series of months following some procedures, including many more blood draws from my anemic mother, she recovered and was able to return to her normal activities … I became fascinated with the … optical properties of blood we could leverage to conduct a wider range of tests … My peers have informed me that the humanities are ever popular because “there’s more than one right answer,” so you can never be wrong. By contrast, in math and science classes, there’s always a correct answer and, more often than not, an incorrect answer. In learning about methods of non-invasive blood analysis, I’ve learned that the room for creativity in science is not in the answer itself, but in the method of finding that answer …

My research began with a news article about PCB pollution in the Hudson River and its effects on a small bottom feeding fish called the Atlantic tomcod. Although this article was geared more toward evolutionary adaptations as a result of environmental pollution, I was drawn to its subtle elements of studying chemical exposure at the molecular level, and I continued to read additional articles and papers concerning toxicology and genetics … My research utilizes Saccharomyces cerevisiae, commonly known as yeast, to visualize differences in gene expression following exposure to various concentrations of lead. Yeast was chosen as an ideal model organism to study genomic level changes because it is a eukaryotic organism, and it is simple to culture, grow, and control. Most importantly, it shares approximately thirty-one percent (1895 genes out of 6116 genes) of its genome with humans and the fully sequenced yeast genome is readily available. Since yeast is the model organism, any changes in gene expression seen in yeast should model what would be expected in humans in the corresponding homologs of the genes analyzed. Changes in gene expression were visualized using RNA extracted from lead-exposed yeast, synthesis of cDNA, PCR, and gel electrophoresis …

Although scientists do not yet fully understand how memories are formed, a protein called phosphodiesterase 4D (PDE4D) is clearly involved. Some children are born with mutated, damaged PDE4D, which results in a genetic condition called acrodysostosis. Kids with acrodysostosis typically have learning disabilities as well as short fingers, short toes, narrow faces, and short height. Currently there is no treatment for acrodysostosis, but this research shows it may be possible to use a small molecule to help mutated PDE4D and treat acrodysostosis. These small molecules may also treat Alzheimer’s dementia, schizophrenia, depression, and Huntington’s disease3 …

In high school, I endeavored to participate in the Brain Bee competitions, the equivalent of the Scripps National Spelling Bee or National Geography Bee, except on neuroscience trivia. Here, I became exposed to the fascinating aspects of the nervous system, especially its striking adaptive capabilities called plasticity. Having read about extraordinary cases in which patients afflicted with neurological disorders managed to survive with minimum personality change or psychological impact, I wondered how far the brain’s resiliency can extend, and more importantly, if it could be harnessed to treat neurological disorders in the future. I reached out to Dr. Nick Spitzer at the University of California, San Diego, who was investigating the plasticity of the brain’s chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. As the first high school student in his lab, I began to study the plasticity of a gaseous transmitter, nitric oxide, induced by alterations in electrical activity. I faced many challenges as I mastered intricate brain microdissections, sliced fine sections of embryonic brains, and operated complex machinery. Research absorbed my time and energy - there were even times when I dreamed about the embryonic tadpoles that I interacted with in the lab!

My research work involved analyzing sediments from three coastal lakes in Japan to reconstruct history of past inundations. The sediments were collected from the lake bottom in the form of vertical cylindrical cores from the approximately the center of the lakes. Sediments collected from anywhere else would not be a stable archive of past inundations as they may get washed or shift with further inundations. Then the sediments were analyzed for grain size and content of organic and in organic materials on a layer by layer basis. The deposition dates for layers were obtained from carbon dating, while the layer thickness was obtained from X-radiography. Collectively, the data allows us to construct past history of inundations … within the errors of resolution, we validated the oral history of typhoons of 1274 and 1281, the years of failed Mongol invasions of Japan, when entire armadas sank due to calamitous storms.

Despite my enthusiasm for science, I was initially nervous about conducting research, and I was hesitant to apply for the Research Science Institute. I had always assumed that meaningful research was in the domain of Ph.D. professors and graduate students, far outside the reach of high school students like me. Given the complexity and dangers of nuclear energy, I thought that this would be especially true for the area in which I was assigned to work. However, while a professor’s research in general can be highly complex, there are often parts with which high school students can assist. Research certainly poses challenges and can be difficult, but I advise that you do not discount it simply due to lack of experience . . . Compared to fossil fuel-powered plants, nuclear reactors can extract a tremendous amount of energy from fuel through a process known as nuclear fission. A conventional nuclear reactor can provide roughly 360,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per kilogram of uranium used; in comparison, coal-fired plants generate about 3 kilowatt-hours per kilogram of fuel. However, an even larger amount of energy remains unused, as conventional nuclear reactors only use about 5% of their fuel (1). The remainder of the fuel along with radioactive products of fission � is disposed of as nuclear waste .

I come from an agricultural family: one side of my family owns a 200-acre farm in Oregon and the other owns a plant nursery adjacent to my backyard in New York. Between living right next to the nursery and spending two or three weeks a year on the Oregon farm, I have been exposed to agricultural and horticultural issues my entire life. When report after report of acid-resistant E. coli outbreaks hit the news over the past few years, I became quite interested in the issue as a result of my agricultural background (and my foodie interests). I was inspired to read more about this problem and the many other problems of today’s increasingly industrialized food system . . . After working through many tutorials, during my second summer in the lab my mentor allowed me to take on a project of my own choosing and design. It was quite a daunting task to pick out a system that I wanted to study, but eventually I picked a protein system that was right in line with my agricultural interests. I chose to use the computational techniques I had learned to study a protein involved in the acid-resistance of E. coli, one of the biggest threats to the safety of our food system today.

As global warming becomes more apparent, the effects of temperature on living organisms are causing great concern. However, most information regarding the impact of rising temperature on life is descriptive and inexact. Along with AP Calculus, I took AP Biology my sophomore year and was fascinated by the idea of emergent properties, the idea that life is not a simple sum of its respective parts; interactions between the different levels of biology create emergent properties that cause, for example, a cell to behave differently from a mixture of its component molecules. I wondered how increasing temperature affects organisms, particularly bacteria, and how its effect on organisms differs from its effect on the chemical reactions that the organism is composed of . . .The impacts of global warming have significant implications for the fate of our globe. Increased temperature will harm plants and animals in the sea and force animals and plants on land to search for new habitats. Climate change will cause flooding, drought and an increase in the number of damaging storms . . .

My first task was to come up with a project idea. I have always loved statistics, so I wanted to do a project involving a lot of data and statistical analysis. I began looking on the internet to find some current research that was being conducted. I came across a man who was working with historical data. The data set that he was working with was ship log data taken by Benjamin Franklin to observe the Gulf Stream. In his possession, this man also had a data set by a less well known British colonist named Phineas Pemberton. I spoke with this man on the phone, and met with him at his office in New York City, where he told me more about the data set, and I became very interested. The data was taken in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the mid to late 1700s. This data is so significant because currently, if a climate scientist wants to do an investigation involving temperature data, they only have reliable data through the mid to late 1800s, so this data set would open up an additional 100 years of data. This is very significant, because the farther back into the climate history we can go, the better the trends that can be noticed, and then the better the predictions that can be made for the future.

Before I entered high school, my older brother returned from his lab each day with a story about his work. I could always hear his excitement when he talked about his project. I knew I wanted to try my hand at research but the microarray analysis procedures he described did not appeal to me. Volunteering then at a local hospital, I wanted to pursue a hands-on study of disease, but was unsure how to go about it. When I made the decision in the spring of 2008 to do summer research, I consulted one of my teachers; he recommended Dr. Carlos Simmerling’s lab, which specialized in computational structural biology at Stony Brook University. And in my first visit to the Simmerling Lab, I was fascinated by the work of two graduate students who were visualizing proteins folding on the computer. The computer offered such a controlled environment for studying biological systems. Working mostly with software tutorials my first summer there, I also found that any experiment required my input at every step it was rewarding to have complete control. I soon began my own analysis of an enzyme in the tuberculosis (TB) pathogen. The freedom I had to study the complexities of TB under such controlled conditions inspired me to continue my project for the next three years.

My very first science fair project, completed in the spring of my seventh grade year, dealt with the harmful effects of acid rain on a variety of common transition metals. This project laid the foundation of my dual interests in inorganic transition metal chemistry and the environmental applications of chemistry. One year later, my research switched gears towards the medical applications of transition metal chemistry. I devised an original recipe for baking powder by eliminating a standard ingredient, sodium aluminum sulfate, which has been identified as a possible chemical trigger of Alzheimer’s disease, and replacing it with a variety of transition metal compounds that are essential to the body. Entering high school, I naturally wanted to combine my interests in both environmental and medical issues while still focusing on the area of inorganic/transition metal chemistry . . . I was pointed in the direction of green chemistry, a sub-field of chemistry that combined my two interests perfectly. Green chemistry, at its core, is a field aimed at creating, from the ground up, specialized catalysts, chemical agents, reactions, and other processes that minimize or even eliminate toxicity and harm to the environment and human health. Given these ambitious aims, a large part of green chemistry involves novel synthesis of various compounds that can potentially end up as important catalysts in a variety of important reactions. This is the vein of green chemistry my project fell into: the synthesis of novel complexes (and useful catalysts) using the metal rhodium. The catalytic activity of the complexes was discovered after a series of tests, and I found them especially pertinent to pharmaceutical synthesis reactions.

Pragmatically, the inspiration for this project is drawn from a series of backpacking excursion I embarked upon with my brother and father two years ago, which in the end totaled approximately 120 miles. Now the golden maxim of backpacking is to pack frugally. So, every day as I repacked my backpack, I would glare angrily at the extra weight of fire by friction set material I had to carry with me because it made the overall weight of my bag very onerous. Then, as I trudged along the trails throughout the day, I started to mull over the idea of possibly constructing the optimal fire by friction set. The more and more I thought about it the more and more that I wanted to find the answer to this curious concept. Subsequently, when my junior year started, I decided that I had to investigate this query of mine, so immediately started doing some background research.

In the summer prior to my sophomore year, I remember reading a Wall Street Journal article titled “Feeding Billions, a Grain at a Time,” discussing how both rising food prices and climate change threatened decades of progress on global agriculture. Then, a few months later, The New York Times launched an article series called “The Food Chain,” highlighting issues in international agriculture. I found it puzzling that while two prominent newspapers were featuring agriculture coverage, very few people in the United States were aware of global food issues. And that’s when I realized an unfortunate reality of the American people: our country is complacent about its food supply. The federal government’s subsidies to large farms guarantee a stable food supply, leading Americans to take their food security for granted. But upon reading those Wall Street Journal and New York Times articles, I began to formulate the vision that agriculture is the fundamental issue in the developing world . . . Competition between food and fuel is a major obstacle to feeding a world whose population, according to the United Nations, is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. That dynamic encouraged me, for my Intel Science Talent Search project, to research how the use of poplar as a biofuel could avoid displacement of food crops by biofuels…

Cold Fusion has been an active research field in the quest for next-generation energy. In Andrei Lipson’s CR-39 experiments, oscillating deuterium atoms or other particles were accelerated (collective acceleration effect) through an electric field and collided with each other to undergo fusion. Another procedure conducted by Roussetski involved the bombardment of TiD2 with a Deuteron beam. In all these scenarios of fusion research, a significant bottleneck is the detection of reactant molecules. The application of CR-39 plastic track detectors in cold fusion experiments is vital to detecting and identifying different particles and background/foreground separation.The current method of gathering data from CR-39 tracks is to use an electron microscope to dissect each individual crater in the x-y and z planes. There has been no way to analyze large amounts of CR-39 data in a reasonable time frame. In this research, we study 3D trace data from nuclear particle impacts upon CR-39 detectors to identify craters made by particles. We utilize a new process, confocal microscopy, to gather numerical trace data from the polycarbonate. We propose and apply new approaches for detecting and computing several main characteristics, such as depth and incident angle, of the impact of the particle. Our approach and related code serves as a tool for automatically classifying the craters and matching them to known collision types and corresponding particles, therefore enabling the efficient and accurate processing of large quantities of CR-39 data…

My parents, both Chinese citizens at the time, came to the United States in the late 80’s to attend graduate school. Later on, my mom got a job offer and they moved to the town I was born and raised in, a small town in North Dakota by the name of Grand Forks. We have been here since then. The Red River of the North runs through Grand Forks, and one summer, I was deemed old enough to ride my bike down to the river so that I could explore. It was then that I found the tubes. Big cement tubes. And there was something coming out of them. And whatever that something was, it was draining into my river. When I asked, I was told that those tubes were pipes that drained runoff water from the city to the river. That answered some of my questions, but not all. And later that winter when I found out about Science Fair, I knew what my project was going to be. That was the year of 2005. For the next four years, I studied river water quality and the river surroundings. A local research center supported my studies by providing the sampling devices and lab facilities that I needed for my project. My first two water quality science projects focused on the long term behavior of common water quality parameters such as pH, turbidity, and the levels of dissolved oxygen and ions. The latter two projects that I conducted focused more on the interaction between the city and the river in terms of how we may be polluting our water sources in ways we don’t realize…

Nanostructures are constructed from carbon nanotubes as well as small nanoparticles on the scale of 0.000 000 001 meters. In recent years, DNA has come to be used in nanotechnology as a structural base material. DNA is prized in this regard for its unique property of Watson-Crick complementary base pairing. This natural process can be exploited to allow for the self-assembly of segments of DNA. Base pairing itself is an extremely primitive example of self-assembly. Because DNA naturally uses this process to form many different shapes, it is a very pliable material that is easily shaped simply by altering nucleotide sequences. Thus, self-assembly of DNA is cheaper, easier, and more desirable than physical manipulation…..

As Dr. Wilson explained to me, researchers had recently developed computational methods known as “local methods,” which made certain approximations to decrease the expense of working with larger molecules. In the description of space employed by local methods, electrons interact mainly with other electrons that occupy spatially close orbitals; with conventional methods, all electrons interact with each other. This approximation reduces the number of integrals the computational program has to evaluate, and thus reduces the computational cost. However, this also reduces the accuracy of local methods. I sought to discover whether local second second-order Moller-Plesset perturbation theory [LMP2] energies systematically converged to a CBS limit and to discover how the accuracy of LMP2 with respect to canonical MP2 varied across basis set levels, including at the CBS limit.

After I wrote a paper about alternative fuels for submission to a science essay competition I came to understand that energy is the root cause of many of the world’s problems. Problems of pollution, food shortages, bad or insufficient water, lack of transportation, terrorism, genocide and global warming all have an energy dimension. I have come to believe that these problems could be ameliorated or even eliminated if we had an abundant and inexpensive source of renewable energy. ….

I first started learning the theory behind quantum chemistry during my sophomore year, when a friend first introduced me to Dr. Tao and his lab at the California State University of Fullerton (CSUF). In the summer of 2006, I spent over 40 hours per week in the lab, running calculations and researching more on reactions involving the hydroxyl and chlorine radicals in the atmosphere.

As a student in the Medical Sciences Specialized Learning Center of Freehold High School in Freehold, New Jersey, I was given the opportunity to conduct independent research for the complete duration of my junior year. Having been given permission to complete any type of research, I wanted to challenge myself by working in a unique research field: I attempted to combine my knowledge and interest in the life sciences with computer science. A friend suggested the use of regression modeling in my project, as he advised that empirically estimating values was becoming essential in today’s scientific world. With helpful guidance from friends, teachers, and advisors, I continued to narrow down my field of research.

Sickle cell anemia is an inherited disorder in which red blood cells become stiff and sickle-shaped. This condition is caused by defective hemoglobin that clusters together, forming long, rod-like structures. The abnormal red blood cells cannot freely move through small blood vessels and thus cause blockages that deprive organs and tissues of oxygen. A study published in 2003 established that the use of hydroxyurea therapy decreases mortality among sickle cell patients by forty percent and significantly reduces pain and acute chest crises. Hydroxyurea produces an increase of fetal hemoglobin, which prevents the polymerization of sickle hemoglobin. It is also a source of nitric oxide (NO), a messenger molecule needed to maintain normal blood flow and pressure. Hydroxyurea reacts with hemoglobin by first forming a nitroxide radical. It then undergoes a series of reactions to produce the nitric oxide needed to increase fetal hemoglobin. Although the production of NO can proceed through various pathways, the process always requires the removal of the hydrogen atom from the OH group of hydroxyurea.