Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is responsible for an estimated 17.9 million annual deaths. Myocardial infarction (MI), a prominent symptom of CVD, occurs when reduced blood flow causes heart muscle death. Since permanent damage to the heart muscle begins within 30 minutes of blood flow restriction, MI is extremely dangerous and time sensitive. Electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the most efficient methods for MI detection; however, it requires expertise to identify characteristic waveform features and it is also prone to interobserver bias. As such, numerous studies have implemented and proposed deep learning algorithms for ECG analysis, which both eliminate these issues and reduce the time it takes to arrive at a classification, in place of manual analysis. However, these studies do not consider the importance of compression algorithms to condense ECG data into smaller, richer sets of data, which could significantly increase classification accuracy and significantly decrease processing time. Therefore, this study investigates 10 compressed formats�orthogonal leads, vectorcardiogram (VCG), three different PCA variations, three different median beat variations, autoencoder, and binary convolutional autoencoder (BCAE)�in comparison to the baseline 12-lead format in MI classification efficacy with the XResNet model.

When a person goes to check on a skin lesion or a runner wants to improve their form, a scanner is often used to track points on the body for measurements. Currently, there exists no solution that can instantaneously (in less than a second) compute the location of all these points at once. MiniMesh is a novel, resource-efficient algorithm that can accomplish this task on a small computer (like a phone or laptop) in real time from a single image. The algorithm takes an unorthodox approach of splitting this complex task into two simpler problems: finding the location of only 119 landmarks and extracting an outline from the patient’s image. After running these procedures, their output can be used to estimate the location of thousands of points which are displayed on the screen using a custom-made rendering engine. Overall, MiniMesh can process on average 20 images per second with high accuracy in all tasks. The speed of the algorithm can be improved to 50+ images per second when running each part of the algorithm parallelly. MiniMesh accomplishes what large motion capture systems can do using only a portable device, creating a fast, accurate, and inexpensive solution for all.

In today’s world, a robotic surgeon manually manipulates the robot via a console using joystick-like controllers. However, such manual methods of control require the surgeon to spend a significant amount of time performing routine but important tasks, such as suturing or tissue cutting, thousands of times over the course of a single surgery. By automating these tasks, we can improve the accuracy and efficiency of the surgery while also allowing the surgeon more time to focus on the more complex surgical tasks at hand.

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). In the mutated oncogenic form of RAS, it remains solely in the GTP state, sending unwanted signals and causing unwanted processes (11,12). The dysregulation of these processes is considered a part of the hallmarks of cancer, which describe a set of functional capabilities acquired by normal human cells as they make their way to becoming malignant tumors (9). The various forms of RAS all have differing functions; HRAS has been found to be implicated most frequently in cervical, prostate, salivary gland, skin, digestive tract, and urinary tract cancers (12).

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. I asked if she’d consider being my mentor, and I was ecstatic when she agreed, despite living across the globe in Australia. For nine months, I’d log onto Zoom at 8:30 PM every Monday in New York, while Dr. Bigelow did the same at 10:30 AM every Tuesday in Melbourne.

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. Around this time, I was taking a summer program about satellite design where I learned about the challenges of data storage in space due to its high levels of radiation. With these two insights in mind and wanting to start a new research project, I decided to develop a storage system for deep space and enterprise applications based on DNA.

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. Even at this early stage, however, I was torn. I had always loved mathematics, but I also adored biology and any topics which had to do with the human body, and I was struggling with finding a topic that neatly tied the two together. It was on a random winter day during the weekend, when I went to a diner with my father for breakfast … There, they had a TV set playing the news, where the latest projected Covid-19 numbers were being displayed. It was at that point my father suggested to me that I should research disease models. There was heavy mathematics used in the creation and analysis of these models, while a strong understanding of diseases and disease epidemiology was required to accurately understand and implement disease models. After some basic investigation, I was smitten … For the rest of the year, I became engrossed in epidemiology, learning about compartmental and agent-based models, disease routes of infection and interventions, and quite excitingly, following the most up-to-date research on Covid-19. When the summer rolled around, I eagerly sent emails to research groups working with disease models. A group at NYU Langone’s Translational Research Department wrote back, and I eagerly began interning at their lab. They worked more on HIV than Covid-19, however, so for the first summer, I investigated their HIV model, EMOD, and learned how to interface with it. I also began learning about HIV itself and applied that knowledge to understanding EMOD. My mentor had also mentioned to me that EMOD, their model, was unable to allocate money to different disease treatment programs. Including this capability was their next goal, and so I also began studying optimization algorithms, specifically those used for more complex problems.

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. This research aims to mitigate this problem through an ML model that analyzes chemical features and accounts for patient variance. To do so: (i) An overview into the relevant biological systems and processes as well as the use case is presented. (ii) Second, an in-depth literature review of existing computational techniques for detecting BBB permeability was undertaken. From there, inflammation is identified as a variable characteristic unexplored across current techniques and an initial solution is proposed. (iii) Lastly, a two-part in silico model to quantify the likelihood of permeability of drugs with defined features across an inflamed BBB through passive diffusion is developed, tested, and discussed. Testing and validation with the dataset determined the predictive logBB model’s mean squared error to be ~ 0.112 units. The currently used neuroinflammation model’s mean squared error was approximately 0.3 units. The developed model outperforms the currently used model to predict permeability into the BBB.

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. Two surveys were developed utilizing the Likert Scale, a derivative of the Everyday Discrimination Scale, and CDC’s Developmental Standards to measure the correlation between the reports of parents’ challenges and the teacher’s observation of the children. Contrary to previous studies on African American preschoolers in similar living conditions, they revealed that the children of Union City were provided with nutritious foods, proper health care, and little exposure to discrimination. After a careful analysis of the government programs and services provided to the constituents of Union City, it could be confidently concluded that these results are due to a unique administration and “close-knit” community. This integration of neurological studies and sociology sets an example for the governments of other low-income communities to implement, refine and improve the children’s prospects and reduce developmental issues within their towns.

My grandmother was my best friend. She laughed when I laughed; she cried when I cried. I wondered why she was suddenly forgetting things she had no problem remembering before. How could my grandma suddenly forget what country she was in? How could my grandma not even remember my name? … Alzheimer’s Disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases. An emerging field of science is genomic neurology, which explores the genetic basis for neurodegenerative diseases. The purpose of this project was to identify genes associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. Genomic data of patients with dementia and healthy controls were collected from the Allen Institute Genome Browser. The following genes were analyzed: Apolipoprotein (APP), Complement Receptor 1 (CR1), Apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4), Clusterin (CLU). Linear regressions were run and showed the degree to which these four genes predicted AD diagnosis. Structured machine learning in the form of decision tree analyses identified which risk factors, including genes and at what levels, best predicted AD diagnosis. Significant results indicated that CR1, APOE4, and CLU were associated with the diagnosis of AD, but APP showed no significant association with the disease. The results of the study identify other potential pathways for new treatments and can help establish a more informed research process …

Like so many others, COVID-19 has had a major impact on my life. My home state, New York was caught unprepared for the pandemic, at great loss. The ensuing response from government and private entities was scattered at best, and at times dangerous. The immense impact COVID has had on my family, community and country inspired me to research it. As the shock of a pandemic began to wear off, and states began reopening, conjectures about the differences between parties and states were widely articulated in the media and public discourse, with little data to support it. As a result, I decided to analyze the differences in lockdowns and reopening’s in each state, hoping to provide data and evidence for these assumptions. To do so, I knew that no study could be perfect. Comparing 50 states lockdowns, often created using arbitrary benchmarks, would undoubtedly be difficult. I categorized the severity of each state’s lockdown for a period of over 18 months. As I collected data, I read about what became of Wisconsin’s lockdown, where state Republican lawmakers caused the overturning of the Democratic Governor’s restrictions. I then decided to expand my study to analyze not just the differences between states’ governor’s political parties, but the differences between their legislative control in comparison to the governor.

My research journey started from when I was a volunteer at a memory and rehabilitation center at my local city. There, I saw the drastic effects of neurodegenerative diseases on individuals making it incredibly hard to continue daily life. Motivated by my interest in neuroscience, I decided to start a research project in computational neuroscience … Neurological disorders continue to affect millions of people worldwide, with diseases leading to loss of cognitive function, a decline in memory, and even death. These diseases contribute to nearly a trillion dollars of healthcare spending and drastically change the lives of those affected. With the advent of new medical imaging and computational techniques, it has become possible to use large amounts of imaging data to build and train deep learning models that can diagnose many diseases with high accuracy rates using clinical tests and medical imaging tests like MRI. Some of the most common neurodegenerative disorders include Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Mild Cognitive Impairment … This study proposes a novel deep learning architecture, NeuroXNet, which performs multiclass diagnosis of AD, PD, MCI, glioma, meningioma, pituitary, and normal patients. NeuroXNet is the first model in published literature that diagnoses neurological diseases in seven classes using MRI images. This is also the first model in published literature which creates a novel architecture to classify neurodegenerative disorders instead of relying on previously built models like ResNet50 or VGG16. Furthermore, novel blood-based biomarkers and their corresponding miRNA regulatory pathways are identified with potential to aid in clinical drug discovery research through target identification, having the potential to drastically fasten the drug discovery process and reduce costs for in vitro experiments. In addition, NeuroXNet generates recommendations for treatment based on classification of disease from its convolutional neural network (CNN) model combined with the patient’s genomic data and clinical data …

Pain is tricky to study. Along with being the most prevalent chronic medical condition in the world, pain forces us to combine our understanding of physiology and the philosophy of the self and mind. This is because pain is considered a “subjective experience”, limited to the individual themselves … We can think of many examples where two different people are presented with the same stimuli or situation and produce a different response: stubbing a toe or holding a hot object, for example. There are even situations where we may respond to stimuli that shouldn’t result in pain. A famous example from 1995 describes a 29-year-old builder who jumped onto a 7-inch nail. He wailed in pain on his stretcher and the ambulance as the nail stuck out of both sides of his steel-toed boot. But when the doctors peeled off the builder’s boot, they found that the nail hadn’t penetrated any part of his foot. It had passed between his toes, without a scratch … A simple linear regression, used improperly, can be overwrought with bias and confounding effects. With the increased availability of data available to the public, it has become increasingly dangerous to make assumptions of the world around us. It is the premise of the project that I present to you today. My project challenges almost two decades of research that confirms the presence of a statistical phenomena and practice within analgesic clinical trials that could have potentially invalidated their results … Pain or not, to produce a more accurate, working model of the world, it is necessary that the data that we obtain, the methods that we use to analyze them, and the conclusions that we draw, operate on valid assumptions and understanding. This is the power of combining mathematics and science; we’re able to unearth previously invisible relationships around us. There is so much left to operationalize, to reason, to understand. With this in mind, don’t forget to challenge your own assumptions as well as the assumptions of the world around you to bring forth a clearer understanding of the tricky things in our world. This is where the progress of science lies.

One evening in the summer of 2020, well after the severity and endurance of the COVID-19 pandemic had become evident, I was having a chat with my father at the dinner table. Both STEM people, our talks often leaned towards the topic of science, especially in the realm of current events. This time, it was the matter of COVID testing that made its appearance. Testing, so essential to managing an outbreak, yet so scarce when it was needed. That night, I learned about a mostly unemployed method in the pandemic called “pooled testing,” where, rather than testing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) samples individually, multiple are combined and tested together. In theory, if a pooled sample were to test negative, it would indicate that all individual samples of that pool are also negative, meaning many tests can be saved. So why not squeeze as many samples as possible (without jeopardizing accuracy) into each pool? The issue here is that with so many samples per pool, more pools are likely to test positive, and all individuals of positive pools must be retested to identify those with the disease. This posed an interesting problem. If some balance between too many and too few individuals per pool could be found, then the amount of tests and thus resources/money saved could be greatly boosted … Over the course of my project, which spanned from late fall of 2020 to summer of 2021 (with large pauses in between), I received advice from a mentor on the process of reviewing literature, producing novel contributions in the field, and writing a paper. However, my research and derivations were performed almost exclusively from the desk in my room. But even without an extravagant lab or experiments to run, this intersection of science and mathematics and public health was enough to fully entertain me.

Cognitive distortions are individually generating thoughts or feelings that are negative, persuasive, and usually inaccurately based on reality. Cognitive distortions can also be referred to as types of thinking. Cognitive distortions all share the commonality of representing an individual’s private negative thinking about themselves and could cause an individual to interact negatively with others. For example, one cognitive distortion type is mental filtering. Mental filtering is when an individual focuses on the negative instead of the positive in a specific current situation. In other words, they filter anything optimistic. Cognitive distortions are important to study because it relates to daily negative thinking that an individual can experience. It is important for mental health professionals to be able to identify cognitive distortions when treating depression, stress, and anxiety because it is essential to modify an individual’s core beliefs in supporting their mental well-being … The purpose of this study was: 1.To determine which cognitive distortions affect high school students more frequently in achievement and social situations and whether it mirrors the college students found by Covin (2011). 2. To examine whether the students who reported higher GPAs and engaged in more rigorous academic courses reported higher frequencies of cognitive distortions …

I have always enjoyed science, ever since I was 7 and read that over 6 billion bacteria live in your mouth. For a 7 year old, this was a scary thought. I refused to eat during meals. I never closed my mouth, as to let the invaders out. I stopped breathing through my mouth and relied only on my nose. However, I am proud to say that I am no longer afraid of being a home to my microscopic friends. Instead, I enjoy their company as they allow me to be immersed daily by science … Anxiety is the normal response of fear that occurs during threatening or stressful situations, but, if this feeling persists, it could be diagnosed as an anxiety disorder [1]. More specifically, social anxiety disorder is a common anxiety disorder. Social anxiety disorder affects 15 million adults, or about 6.8% of the United States’ population [26]. Symptoms for the disorder appear in both females and males around age 13 [26]. Females have been found repeatedly to be more likely than males to suffer from and be diagnosed with anxiety, including social anxiety [27]. People who experience this disorder feel symptoms of anxiety or fear in specific if not all social situation (e.g. meeting people for the first time) and doing daily tasks in front of others [1]. These people have a fear that they will be humiliated, judged, and/or rejected [1]. This disorder may be hereditary, but it is unknown why some family members may experience social anxiety while others do not [28,29] … Current studies have yet to examine the effects of MDMA on social anxiety in healthy human volunteers while also considering sex as a factor. Thus, this study evaluated prosocial effects of MDMA through the administration of modified questionnaires that addressed social anxiety, depressive experiences, and mood states with sex as a contributing factor …

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the world and succeeding melanoma skin cancer, it is the second leading cancer in men and women. Accessibility to the expensive imaging technology and accurate diagnostic tools for this disease is limited and therefore leads to death at an early stage. The need exists to develop an innovative diagnostic and detection measure to promptly detect the presence and type of cancer. This sparked the interest to develop an innovative lung cancer detection algorithm, LCDetect. It uses Python scripts, machine learning models, segmentation algorithms, and localization of solitary pulmonary nodules (SPN’s), tumors, and lesions to detect the presence of cancer, malignity, type and stage. It uses the lung CT scan to provide a thorough diagnosis and reduce the need for PET and biopsy to prevent late detection. The algorithm works in three modules; image preprocessing, image detection, and a convolutional neural network model (CNN). Preprocessing includes noise removal, normalization, image filters, segmentation and augmentation. Extracted regions of interest, that are based on the location of nodules, are passed to image detection for feature extraction through segmentation and pixel calculations. Based on the extracted features, the layers of the CNN categorize the lung cancer using location-based analysis. Through the complex image detection and preprocessing techniques that feed through the layers of CNN model, the generated feature maps perform this classification. After several optimization techniques such as backpropagation and regression, a thorough statistical analysis was performed. Then, the algorithm was deployed on Azure Web Services. The system was trained and tested across 50,000 datasets and patient CT scans from local radiologists. The final algorithm passed with an accuracy of 98%. LCDetect is an innovative and fully functional solution to accurately detect for adenocarcinoma, squamous cell, non-small cell, and small cell lung cancer and predict the stage…

Did you know that we’ve been studying the expanses of outer space longer than our own brains?! The term neuroscience was coined barely a century ago, proving how little we know about the 3 pound supercomputer within each and every one of us … as I started reading background literature, I became hooked! I found it incredible the way the brain stores the people, places, and items we see everyday like shelved books in a library. Everything is so expertly categorized while also allowing the brain to make connections between related concepts (Ex: Cat and Dog). It’s crazy to think that of the brain’s immense processing power, close to half of it is dedicated singularly to processing vision! … Overall, there were many fascinating things I learned from my research. First off, the brain prioritizes scenes over objects when it comes to visual recognition. The brain uses a heuristic approach to guess what objects may be present using the scene. For example, “If there’s a beach maybe there will be a beach ball.” Therefore, scenes were far more significant towards familiarity than objects. Another significant finding related to the visual cortex processing pipeline. Past studies assert that memory interfacing does not occur in the lower levels of the visual cortex. However, both this year’s study and last year’s studies show significant evidence that lower stages of the visual cortex actually participate in high-level processes. Some examples are short-term memory and mental imagery.

It all started when I thought I had gingivitis. I came to this conclusion after consulting the most reputable source I knew, webmd.com of course. Sitting at the doctor’s office, I anxiously waited for the confirmation. Were my suspicions correct? Nope! As my doctor explained my negative result, guilt slowly overcame me. I had just wasted three hours of my dad’s time. Driving home, I was determined to find meaning in this seemingly unfulfilling trip, and indeed I did. The visit highlighted my privilege, which ignited my “eureka” moment. A dental diagnosis requires time, a medical professional, and money. Three things millions of people globally don’t have; a problem I sought to address. With the aim of increasing dental care worldwide, I invested the following two years in creating an automated dental cavity detection system using Artificial Intelligence (AI). With a single dental photographic color image, my system can provide a cavity diagnosis and explain the diagnosis to the end-user in an understandable manner. By automating detection and explainability, which are skills dentists typically employ, I hope to assist those who can’t visit the dentist due to lack of dental insurance, dentophobia, or limited dentist availability. Through this research, I had the opportunity to work with an IBM researcher and experiment with different deep learning architectures, explainable AI algorithms, and training techniques such as curriculum learning and transfer learning. By incorporating deep learning into my project, I gained experience in an interdisciplinary field powered by linear algebra, calculus, statistics, and biology. Above all, conducting such research has motivated me to pursue a career in computational health…

As I gathered data to analyze, I ran into the striking problem of racial bias in all available samples and the disparity in early diagnosis and survival rates between the African American population and European individuals. As a woman of color and youth activist myself, I wanted to start a project that studied cancer epigenetics in the context of population-specific health disparities to begin revolutionizing early and equitable diagnosis methods and treatment options. As I pursued my research into the following summer, I began to see parallels between epigenetic variates and sex-specific higher incidence as well. My research focus shifted to epigenetic markers correlated with larger population-specific incidence (both racial and sexual), and how understanding these epigenetic markers could eventually aid in population-specific early diagnosis procedures … I believe the most interesting and impactful next question to further the intersection of epigenetic oncology and population epigenetics is why and how do population-correlated cancer-causing epigenetic variations arise, and what can we do to prevent them? … In 50 years, my hope is that researchers will have used this epigenetic data to develop comprehensive and accessible early diagnosis models for at-risk populations, isolated population-correlated oncogenic epigenetic markers, and started to develop epigenetic therapies for these markers (which, because epigenetic modifications are reversible unlike mutations, have already been shown to be highly effective in the clinical setting).

Gastrointestinal illnesses afflict more than 100 million people in the U.S. alone and are often indicated by gut microbiota motility. Typically, swarming bacteria are indicators of infection while swimming bacteria are more innocuous. Current diagnostic methods for intestinal diseases are lengthy, expensive, non-specific, or lead to serious complications. This study proposes a novel way to diagnose Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) through quantitatively distinguishing bacterial motion. Current methods of discerning bacterial motility involve only qualitative description without consideration of potential medical applications; no quantitative models to differentiate bacterial motility exist. In this study, a novel interdisciplinary diagnostic tool was developed that distinguishes swarming and swimming SM3 bacteria quantitatively for the first time. Photolithography was used to create PDMS sheets and microgears for studying both motilities. Software captured images for Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) analysis for the calculation of Vortex, Nematic, and Polar Order Parameters, which were fed into a developed machine learning algorithm; accuracy was analyzed to ascertain the importance of each variable in motility distinction. Vortex Order Parameters (VOPs) were used to generate a Vicsek model for differentiating swimming and swarming which demonstrated the importance of cell-cell alignment force in motility distinction - the model yielded high and low VOP values for swarming and swimming respectively. Studies of motility on intestinal tissue supported modeling trends from prior PIV analysis on agar. This novel tool can be tested in a variety of intestinal diseases to provide a preliminary diagnosis, operating more economically, efficiently, specifically, and safely than conventional procedure.

Heart disease or cardiovascular disease - are two words that a patient prays not to hear during diagnosis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death for men and women across most racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. CVD is the grim reaper of diseases, accounting for approximately 655,000 deaths annually, or 25% of all deaths in America (pre-COVID-19 pandemic). Besides the toll on human life, the financial impact is equally devastating. US annual cost of heart disease is $219 Billion including cost of health services, medicines, and lost productivity … This case study reports the results of a research project to gather insights into heart disease lifestyle and risk factors using statistical analysis that is generally used to improve product and service quality in companies. This research aimed to answer the following: what does the statistical analysis of CDC data from all US states reveal? What known facts does it affirm? What new risk factors does it uncover? What does it reveal about combined effects of these risk factors?

During the winter of 2020, I was expecting to have a very different project for the summer. COVID was not something that was on everyone’s minds all the time, and I was spending time looking and applying for internships in a lab performing biological research. Biology has always been of great interest to me, and I want to pursue biomedical engineering in the future. When the pandemic hit, my summer plans were upended. Labs everywhere were closed and not accepting any interns. Worried that I would not have a project for the following school year, I realized that I needed to shift gears. I was suddenly tasked with coming up with an idea for a project that I could perform almost completely independently on my computer at home. I also had to find a mentor to answer any questions I had. As I watched the media cover stories about anti-masker protests and COVID deniers, I started to think about the psychology of the crisis that we were in. Why did the United States, one of the countries best equipped to deal with a pandemic, have such a dismal response? I started to research the psychology behind crisis responses, especially the theory of reasoned action, and that led me to my politics-focused question. I thought that it was possible that people were looking to sources of information that they trust, and as a result were consuming partisan information with conflicting messages, resulting in the disastrous first few months of the pandemic.

The inspiration for this project really comes from my undying love of music, and my inkling for finding scientific explanations for everything. My volunteering experiences especially inspired how I undertook this project. I’ve been volunteering as a music therapist in places like our local science museum as well as schools in India using my drumming. I’ve noticed that drums are very effective at reducing stress, improving motor skills, and focus-related tasks for children in particular, yet when it comes to professional auditory therapy, drums are neglected in favor of synthesized compositions like binaural beats. As a result, auditory therapy can be difficult for some children especially, to use effectively, as the monotony of some therapy tactics could actually be irritants and end up having adverse effects. Thus, my research project attempts to make auditory therapy more universal and accessible for listeners of all kind, by adding elements of music and rhythm to it. I wanted to find out, however, if there is a scientific basis of adding musical percussion to a binaural beat, in order to make this method of auditory therapy more musical. This would allow me to use the same percussion that I have seen to work as music therapy, and introduce it into binaural beats to make this type of auditory therapy more accessible, appropriate, and enjoyable to listen to for many people, especially those with Autism or ADHD. In order for me to perform this research, Music Technology Professor Daniel Walzer from UMass Lowell graciously offered his help as a mentor. He suggested numerous tweaks and changes that I made to my research plan, including the recording setup, how I transferred the audio to my computer, which kinds of spectrograms and audio analysis tools to use, and even how to record two different drums to achieve optimal recordings. Overall, however, I didn’t use any labs or professional-level equipment to perform this project, and, for the most part, this project was done entirely at home … If I had to summarize this project and my experiences during it in just a few words, it would go something like this. Binaural beats are tools used in music and auditory therapy to improve memory and sharpen focus and motor skills. They involve playing two different tones into each ear so that the brain perceives a third tone with a pulsing effect and creates its own brainwaves. Since percussion is often used in music therapy, but rarely in binaural beats, I want to find if there is a scientific conclusion to be made about adding a percussive backbeat to binaural beats. I recorded and created percussion-based binaural beats using computer software, and I wrote a computer simulation software that takes into account frequency ranges, pitches, and pulsing effects of drumming among other factors to determine how efficient a certain binaural beat is in eliciting brainwaves. I found that whenever certain aspects of a percussion-based backbeat were optimized, they were 4% more efficient than regular binaural beats. I’d like to continue this research by performing brainwave analysis on humans in the future. This research could increase the accessibility of music therapy compared to monotonous binaural beats, as rhythmic compositions involving a binaural beat can increase therapeutic effects and appeal to more listeners in the general public, especially those with Autism or ADHD.

As a rising freshman, I participated in the Optics Science Olympiad event. The experimental portion of the event particularly interested me. Given several optical devices, I was tasked with designing and executing an experiment that demonstrated a concept such as dispersion or refraction. This experience sparked my interest in optics. I volunteered as an assistant coach for the event in high school, where I gained a deeper understanding of the field through teaching others. This experience made me want to further pursue the field, so I reached out to Professor Y. Fainman, the head of the UC San Diego nanophotonics lab. I was fortunate to be accepted as a volunteer intern starting the summer after my freshman year. I began by just assisting my mentor with data collection, but I gradually grew my understanding until I could contribute to a project on my own. By the end of my sophomore year, I was ready to begin working on the analysis of spectrometers. I applied my mathematics training to analyze how light interference could work with novel geometries derived from Albert Abraham Michelson’s classic experiment, and this led to my research paper. I’ve always loved working with new tools and concepts, and once I understood the relevant background, I was able to make my own contribution … Oftentimes, light that we see is comprised of many different wavelengths. A device called a spectrometer is needed to determine exactly which wavelengths make up the light emitted or absorbed from an everyday light source. Knowing this information has important practical benefits, from determining the identity of specific chemical compounds to analyzing the motion of stars and planets to detecting the presence of harmful gases, and many others. Spectrometers have been widely studied, but every spectrometer has its own strengths and weaknesses. One of the best ways to build a spectrometer is to use an interferometer, a device that analyzes interference patterns to extract information about the light source. Here, I present analysis and a demonstration of stationary interferometry with no moving parts and a camera limited by a finite resolution. I experimentally and analytically show that interference patterns that require much higher resolutions to appropriately display can be distinguished by a combination of their aliased spatial frequency and their contrast. The motivation is to enable higher spatial frequencies to be clearly distinguishable, and hence improve the flexibility and wavenumber resolution (constant finite difference between measurable wavenumbers) of the resulting spectrometer. By moving past numerous Nyquist edges, the wavenumber resolution rapidly improves, allowing for low-cost, stationary, and accurate spectrometers to be constructed. When combined with compact, state-of-the-art semiconductor lasers, the simplicity of the setup and the ability of the system and mathematical algorithm to function with low-resolution cameras (2.3 megapixels) opens the possibility for such compact spectrometers to be eventually implemented on smartphones…

It was just another car ride home with my brother; I was the curious freshman asking difficult questions to the knowledgeable senior. Topic of the night: viruses. It seemed almost unfair, how viruses could inject their DNA into target cells and exploit them as host cells. I inquired further, “But Kevin, what if scientists could actually reprogram these viruses to artificially alter genomes?” He paused. “Hm … never thought of that.” After I got home, I eagerly searched “genome editing viruses,” and a phrase kept popping up: “CRISPR-Cas9.” I found exactly what I was looking for: researchers were transfecting reprogrammed bacterial plasmids into target cells to selectively mutate genomes. Moreover, I was particularly interested in cancer CRISPR screening - a contemporary method for identifying tumorigenesis drivers in the tumor microenvironment. After reading more literature and discussing my interest with teachers, I realized the massive potential this form of computational analysis holds in the field of systems biology. I was determined to teach myself R language and parallel it with my enthusiasm for the CRISPR-Cas9 system to hopefully aid in the development of improved cancer immunotherapy … Cancer death tolls are expected to continue increasing to 13 million in 2030. Despite recent advancements in cancer research, cancer cells utilize countless genetic perturbations to resist current methods of immunotherapy. Understanding the tumor mechanisms of immune escape is imperative for designing improved immunotherapies. This study lays important groundwork for elucidating the functional roles of tumorigenesis drivers. By employing diverse machine learning approaches with a high-resolution 10X Genomics Chromium scRNA-seq dataset, this study establishes a novel pipeline to separate, identify, and characterize the remodeled cell populations within the tumor microenvironment after Prkar1a knockout. With this methodology, researchers can evaluate the effects of countless protumor genetic perturbations that have remained unexplored for decades. Top differentially expressed genes identified in both the tumor and immune subpopulations not only characterized the cell populations, but also reinforced current literature. In addition, this study is the first of its kind to holistically validate the efficacy of two cutting-edge tools, PHATE and scmap, via well-established methods tSNE and canonical marker expression, respectively…

Physicians in the US currently rely on two guidelines for asthma diagnostics: the EPR-3 and the GINA report. Due to the ten year difference in publication time, a comparison between both guidelines is necessary. Additionally, while the guidelines include defined parameters for impairment factors, patient-specific risk factors remain unparameterized. By parameterizing the risk factors and following a phenotype-oriented diagnostic approach, clinicians may be may be able to improve asthma diagnostics with respect to speed and accuracy consistency. Computerized algorithms for the EPR-3 and GINA report were coded in Java and compared with respect to therapy recommendations for mild, moderate, and severe asthmatics. A systematic literature review and meta-synthesis was performed in the PubMed database to determine parameters for asthma phenotype categorization. A computerized algorithm was coded based on determined parameters. and compared to the EPR-3- and GINA report-based algorithms with respect to therapy recommendation for asthmatics of five established phenotypes. The GINA reports recommendation of specialist assessment for severe asthma supported the emphasis on asthma as a heterogeneous disease since publication of the EPR-3. The systematic-review-based algorithm recommended targeted therapy such as anti-IL-5 for the late-onset eosinophilic phenotype when compared to the EPR-3 and GINA algorithms recommended inhaled corticosteroids with long-acting agonist, suggesting the potential of the phenotype-oriented approach for personalizing clinical decisions.

One weekend, I was out for a game of soccer with my friends. The temperature was a blazing 95?, and I began to feel light headed. I thought to myself: Why am I experiencing these symptoms? During halftime, I checked Google on my phone, and I learned that as I played, I excreted fundamental electrolytes, such as sodium, and water. However, I was only ingesting water, which resulted in a decrease in my body’s sodium levels, also known as hyponatremia. This created an osmotic imbalance across my blood brain barrier; therefore, a water flux caused my headache. After further research, I learned that my dizziness was just the tip of the iceberg sodium deficiencies result in a host of cardiac and neurological complications. I also saw a headline from a soccer player at Ajax, Abdelhak Nouri, who had the same deficiencies as me, but his were far more serious a cardiac arrhythmia led to permanent brain damage. This was when I realized that it was essential to develop a method for continuously monitoring sodium in athletes. I read countless journals to gain an understanding of current sensors, and I realized that their applications could not be realized due to drawbacks such as inaccuracy under low sweat rates and sweat volumes. From my knowledge of piezoelectric materials, I recalled that the energy outputs tended to have very small currents currents small enough to not be felt by a person. Therefore, I came up with the concept of applying the small currents generated by the conductivity of sodium to deform a piezoelectric beam and evaluate if this sensor could address the limitations of past sensors …

That squirrel over there has a funny looking mouth because she is stuffing too many acorns into her cheeks. It’s not a knee-slapper but it makes you want to smile. And when your neighbor takes the garbage out and smiles at you, I bet you smile back. A smile is critical in communication. A lack of smiling can be symptomatic of autism, depression, and schizophrenia. My experiment investigated the difference between brain activity while a person smiles in an interaction with another person and the brain activity while a person smiles from a non-human stimulus. Brain activity of pairs of subjects was recorded with functional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS) while a facial classification device measured the strengths of their smiles. Participants alternated between viewing cute animal videos and the face of their partner sitting across from them. Results showed even though both subjects smiled, smiling from watching a partner smile exhibited brain activity in social brain areas like Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas, and the temporal gyrus. Smiling from watching videos displayed brain activity in brain areas responsible for movement. These findings indicate that social smiles activate a separate system of brain activity that of smiles engendered by non-human stimuli … My claim from using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) brain scanning is that those two smiles are neurologically different. The smile you give your neighbor after she gives one to you, the smile contagion known as the social smile, activates the Broca and Wernicke areas of the brain, as well as temporal gyrus all of which are all associated with communication and social cues. Conversely smiling because of a funny looking squirrel activates areas of the brain such as the motor and parietal cortex, which are responsible for movements and sensations. But why might it be important that there is a distinction between a social contagion smile and just a smile from a cute scene?

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS) that affects millions of people globally. It targets the neurons of the CNS and destroys their myelin sheaths, or the fatty layer of insulation around them. This can lead to loss of motor function, deteriorating vision, loss of balance, and muscle weakness. In addition, recent studies have shown mounting evidence of crosstalk between the cellular pathways of MS and osteoporosis, a disease of the degeneration of bone and loss of bone density. These studies have demonstrated that the risk of osteoporosis in people with MS is far higher than that of the general population (Lian et al., 2012). Osteoporosis is a disease that originates from an imbalance in the bone remodeling cycle. Osteoblasts, which are the cells that form new bone, cannot maintain pace with osteoclasts, which break down bone, causing a loss in bone mass and increasing the chance of fractures.

Preliminary diagnosis of lung cancer has led to countless cases of overtreatment due to false positive classifications made by physicians and radiologists. Most commonly, the misclassification of a benign pulmonary nodule (PN) as malignant from chest X-ray images initiates this process for patients. In the advent of promising machine learning and computer vision models, we investigate the optimization of benign and malignant PN classification using deep convolutional neural networks through transfer learning by fine tuning its convolutional layers. Specifically, we look at how fine-tuning the VGG19 convolutional neural network model differently affects its classification accuracy. With our optimal model, we test its efficacy in localizing and classifying PNs on chest radiographs using a selection search-based scanning method. We found that fine-tuning the last convolutional block yields the highest predictive performance. Using a reserved image test set, our model is able to yield a classification accuracy of 77% compared to published models yielding 68%. This methodology can be easily generalized and applied to other medical imaging tasks.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been both fascinated and frightened by that full range of malicious, deadly human diseases that have no cure. The possibility of one’s body turning against itself, waging war on its own cells and disrupting the complex biological processes that keep us healthy terrified me. I found the best way to confront my fears was to simply learn what causes debilitating diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease what goes wrong in our body to cause these horrible maladies, and why. Somehow, learning about the purely technical, scientific aspects behind the pathogenesis of these diseases helped to erode my sense of powerlessness. I became hopeful and naturally progressed to thinking about cures. I indulged my growing curiosity by getting my hands dirty and reading esoteric abstracts, which, with lots of help from Google, I gradually became able to understand … Pharmacological chaperones are orally administered small molecules that, when bound to a misfolded protein, revert the misfolding process. To discover pharmacological chaperones for specific protein targets, knowledge of the 3D structure of the protein is required to identify exosites for the chaperone to bind to. Even then, most misfolded proteins do not possess natural binding sites. This project aims to find the structural analogues of ligands of misfolded proteins that can function as pharmacological chaperones. Using Java, I developed a classifier based on the support vector machine learning model to predict the structural similarity between two molecules using 2D molecular descriptors that function as similarity metrics.

Being part of research is such an amazing experience. You only need to be passionate about something and excited to learn more and willing to do the work. Research can be difficult sometimes after all, experiments are learning experiences, and things don’t always go as planned but it’s definitely worth it. You get to learn from a new perspective and actually contribute to what you’re learning about; you can find new interests or further ones you already have. Either way, it’s really interesting. Whether you want to join a lab or do field work, focus on STEM or a humanity, there are tons of ways to get involved in research. So, if you get the chance, take it … The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the rs53576 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and stress management in high school students. I’d hypothesized that individuals with the G variation of the SNP would be more capable of managing stress than those with the A variation. Saliva samples were collected from 22 participants and used to analyze cortisol levels and DNA. Participants also completed surveys and Perceived Stress Scales in order to determine the various factors contributing to their stress …

Cancer is a very elusive subject; my textbooks would often place approach the topic with a disclaimer that our knowledge of cancer was evolving. And through this, I became aware that though the collection of data itself is rigorous and exact, the actual formation of hypotheses and methods to test them is an unsure process. Specifically, the results we receive can be surprising and, at times, disappointing. I had many trips in the road during my first official laboratory experience. Learning the basic research techniques as well as the process of documenting everything made me feel again like a baby learning to walk … Breast cancer continues to be one of the most prevalent of cancers, acting as the leading cause of cancer-related death for women worldwide (DeSantis et al., 2015); current treatments of breast cancer include surgery, radiotherapy, and medication. In this study, a novel drug that targets the tumor by inhibiting cell proliferation is being examined. One of the hallmarks of cancer is unlimited proliferation. Cancer cells ignore signals that in normal cells maintain a consistent balance of growth and replication (Hanahan and Weinberg, 2011). This developing treatment, by inhibiting cell proliferation, is ridding breast cancer cells of a key factor and facilitating possible clearance of the tumor cells …

When I was in sixth grade, I first became aware of my family history of heart disease. My dad battling chronic hypertension, close relatives passing away from heart failure, and me knowing that I could be next in line … During my freshman year of high school, my curiosity to investigate better heart disease therapies drove me to take honors biology. I was especially intrigued by our discussion of the incredible healing potential of pluripotent stem cells. Eager to learn more, I decided to take a summer class in biotechnology at the University of Pennsylvania, through the Summer Academy of Applied Science and Technology … As I began to code my algorithm, I found myself exploring the exciting interface between biology and vector calculus. I realized that, by thinking of a tissue contracting as a point being displaced in the cartesian coordinate system, I could make the problem of identifying contractile force magnitude and direction much simpler. Thinking about displacement immediately called to mind vectors, which I had just learned about in my junior year multivariable calculus class. As I reviewed the literature for previous attempts at modeling tissue contractions using vectors, I encountered a paper from UCSF that employed vector fields to represent tissue displacement.

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.

Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi said, Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different. It was a tenant of my high school research program, one which resonates with me deeply. This was one of many mantras instilled in me by that all-star teacher, Ms. Zeitlin. I learned the importance of looking beyond the journal, the lab bench, and the next deadline in scientific research . . . I sought to investigate how generalist strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae withstand mutation compared to specialist strains. I wanted to explore how the genetic robustness of environmentally robust strains compared with that of non-environmentally robust strains. Is there a relationship between environmental and genetic robustness, and, if so, how is that relationship defined? Multiple replicates of a chemical mutagenesis experiment would be carried out for this investigation, though it would be unclear what mutations occurred, until a model with confidence was achieved and genome-wide sequencing carried out.

I specifically studied lysosomal distribution in distal axons, or the parts of the axons that were further away from the cell body. I did so using microfluidic chambers which are devices that allow the physical separation of the cell body and the axons . . . Altogether, my research actually suggests that lysosomes are mobile, and can be recruited to degrade waste in neurons axons, instead of staying within the neuronal cell body. Defects in lysosomal either transport or function may lead to accumulation of waste proteins in axons as seen in neuronal disorders. This study established a solid foundation to further investigate the role of lysosomes in distal axons under healthy and stress conditions associated with axonal degeneration. If we better understand the mechanisms behind lysosomal movement and distribution in axons, we can develop better therapeutic strategies in treating major neurodegenerative diseases, such as AD, PD, and ALS.

Now here is something important. As I learned the hard way, doing research is very different from reading about it. Reading a paper could take, say 45 minutes, but the paper itself could easily contain years of work. What I’m getting at here is that producing good scientific research is rigorous and requires resilience, which is something you�ll have the opportunity to develop. So don’t feel distraught if you are struggling? in fact, you’re supposed to, or you’re not learning! … Devising effective strategies for treating cancer requires elucidating molecular mechanisms through which the disease initiates and spreads. A critical step for doing so is distinguishing driver mutations from passenger mutations, the former contributing to tumorigenesis while the latter, though abundant, being nonfunctional . . . An accurate statistical model, balancing computational intensity and accuracy, was developed for the evaluation of mutual exclusivity between driver genes in the human genome across twelve cancer types. With this model, driver genes were identified for each biological pathway and a novel algorithmic strategy based on the previous mutual exclusivity algorithm was devised to evaluate relationships between pathways.

Human memory is undeniably variable. It is evident that no two people can have the exact same memory capacity? however, it is also palpable that a single person’s individual memory is extremely inconsistent. It has been shown that there are several factors that could account for such variation? for example, differences in a person’s memory across his or her lifespan could be accounted for by age and neuroplasticity, while differences across years could be accounted for by factors such as maturation and experience (Maylor 1998? Stebbins et al., 2002? Tisserand, McIntosh, van der Veen, Backes, & Jolles, 2005). On the other hand, memory discrepancies become more difficult to account for when variability occurs from one hour to the next, or furthermore, from minute to minute. With near constant external conditions in such short amounts of time, it is possible that there exist certain concrete external variables that can account for such differences. At the same time, it could also be the case that such differences are inexplicable by external factors, and that the brain is simple better suited for cognitive tasks at certain times than others . . . My advice to someone . . . wants to undertake a project combining math and science would be to be open to learning things they may never have even heard of before. I would advise to not get discouraged if you find that the research you want to do involves topics beyond the scope of your high school curriculum, and instead to embrace this as a challenge to learn much more than you could ever learn in class. Do not just stick to topics you are comfortable with in doing your research? go above and beyond to learn more about the science and math you will be integrating in your project, and you will find it to be invaluable.

3DPrinters have slowly become more commonplace as they become cheaper and smaller. Makerspaces and libraries have made them more accessible for the average consumer to use, normally to print something small and made only of single colored plastic. 3Dprinters have become prominent in many fields, most notably, tissue engineering. My research focused on 3Dinkjet printers, which unlike most 3Dprinters use a liquid ink, not a plastic. This allowed me to use the 3Dprinter to create a specific shape while keeping the final product soft enough to resemble tissues and support cell growth. The bioink was made with a polymer called hyaluronic acid (HA) which is a key component of extracellular matrices for supporting muscle structure.

More than half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended. While some of these pregnancies are due to birth control method failures, most are due to unanticipated exposure. Emergency contraception is a postcoital contraception that allows women the possibility of preventing pregnancy in such cases. Currently, there are two types of FDA-approved emergency contraception: the coppercontaining intrauterine device (IUD) and oral emergency contraceptive pills. The most effective method for emergency contraception is the IUD at 99.9%. However, the hormonal pills are far more widely used, at about 90% for women who are at risk for pregnancy, because they are more easily accessible, more affordable, convenient, free of adverse side-effects and do not require after-care. While the outcomes of emergency contraception are well-documented, their mechanism(s) of action remain a matter of discussion. Due to the gap in knowledge regarding emergency contraceptive pill efficacy, my study focuses on the mechanism of action of emergency contraceptive pills.

I’ve grown up surrounded by education. My mother is a bilingual speech therapist at a school in Upper Manhattan so I’ve seen the cogs and gears within the New York City public school system. However, my older brother is the one who sparked my interest in education and education policy. He started out with a public school education but by the time he reached high school he transferred to a private school specializing in an education for students with special needs. Subjected to repeated misdiagnosis, my brother was not correctly diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, specifically Asperger’s syndrome.

Bioinformatics is a field that draws from mathematics, computer science, and engineering to develop biological understanding [26]. Bioinformatics uses many techniques and analyses to identify the biological mechanisms that underlie biological data. Bioinformatic analysis begins with data such as sequences of DNA, structural information about a protein, or measures of gene expression. Much of this data is available online in publicly accessible repositories. Using these repositories, researchers can apply various machine learning techniques to high-quality data without incurring the cost of generating the data themselves.

By Ien Li - Medicine One memory that resonates with me occurred the summer I turned twelve, when my family visited our home country, Taiwan, for the first time in a decade. There, amidst the elation of reunion, I also received staggering news: I had developed severe idiopathic scoliosis … It was in coming to terms with my struggle that I realized my passion for scientific research, a discipline that has allowed me to meet and collaborate with incredible scientists, and has pushed the boundaries of what I deemed achievable. Initially, in pursuit of research opportunities, I had emailed letters to fifty-five prominent researchers, whose published works I greatly admired. Yet three-quarters of the scientists to whom I reached out never responded.

Research is very special for me. It is unequivocal that it has irrevocably changed my life, and it is my hope that by sharing my story, I might be able to demonstrate its transformative power … As a 10th grader, I couldn’t see past the street culture that my school community was awash with. Scientific research was just something in a textbook � drugs, gangbanging, fights, and pregnancies were the demanding reality in front of me. However, I had historically been a good student. I liked exploring far away ideas in my mind and exerting some measure of control over my life. Things were coming to a head, though, and events dictated that this year was to be a crossroads. It was with the encouragement and support of a science teacher that year, Mr. Jason Brennan, that I entered the UC Davis Teen Biotech Challenge. He saw something in me that I doubt anyone else could have at that point in time. Through TBC, I landed an internship with the UC Davis stem cell program.

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 …

Each year, nearly 800,000 people in the US suffer strokes. Of these, about 38%, or 300,000, experience some degree of aphasia, or loss of linguistic abilities … Regardless of symptoms, many aphasic patients show marked improvement over time, with some studies reporting up to 40% of patients recovering completely within a year of the stroke … In this project, I analyzed the differences in word use between well-recovered aphasic patients (those that perform well on the Western Aphasia Battery) and normal control subjects on a discourse task. Although the aphasic patients exhibited near-normal performance on the word and sentence levels, they produced different patterns of text structure and word use than normal subjects. This project introduced a methodology for statistically analyzing these differences in word use. In the future, a similar approach could be used to develop a diagnostic tool to identify patients with discourse impairments, based on analysis of the words used in a short transcript of speech …

Synesthesia, he said, is the union of senses otherwise unconnected in a normal brain. He described Albert Einstein using shapes instead of numbers to complete mathematical algorithms, and briefly scoffed at the absurd idea of colored letters. Could it be that none of my classmates saw our teacher’s name in purple with flecks of sandy brown? Were As not inherently fire-truck red nor Z’s metallic gray? Didn’t everyone find it efficient to memorize phone numbers according to their unique color palates? … Confused and bewildered, I stumbled home, repeating over and over the word my teacher had mentioned so nonchalantly: synesthesia, synesthesia, synesthesia. Powering up my computer, I immediately began to read every article I could find on this mysterious disorder, disease, condition, or superpower. It seemed as though researchers did not even know how to classify my sixth sense. As it turns out, every day of my life, I’ve been wearing rainbow-colored glasses. Cemented to my eyes like irremovable contact lenses, they turn letters into colors, music into tastes, and time into space …

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 …

My work on this project has made me see the connection between science and the social policy and historical issues that are so important to me. I did not understand before how valuable and critical social science analytical tools could be in understanding what I consider to be key moral issues of our time, such as what I studied here – how to reduce health and poverty in this country and abroad. Now I appreciate that through carefully collected and studied data, we can learn much to improve the quality and effectiveness of the policies implemented to address poverty and health … In addition to appreciating the worth of scientific research, I found a higher level of independence through the completion of this project than I realized possible in high school. Free of assignments and grades, I took on this project to experiment and learn for my own pleasure and increased knowledge. It surprised me to find myself not only spending hours obsessing over the project itself, but also enjoying learning a data analysis program called STATA in which I coded data, cleaned data, ran regressions, and analyzed results. Before undertaking this project I would have said that I was not “the type” to master statistical thinking or analysis, but I was wrong.

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!

When I was little, I always wondered why my parents worked late every day. While my friends went home after preschool, I would stay at my parents labs, waiting for them to finish their research. What was so interesting about science? One day, I begged my dad to show me his experiments. Smiling at my enthusiasm, he scraped some of my cheek cells and put them under the microscope. As he pointed out the nucleus and organelles of each cell, I watched in awe at the hidden complexity within my own body. At that moment, I knew that I wanted to be like my dad: to be able to look into the microscope and understand how the world works…After calibrating the basic model according to the videos and constants found in other scientic papers, I could then test the impact of different cellular foot forces on the overall rate of wound healing. I tested the effects of mechanical and chemical forces on the cell and found that mechanical forces alone could close a wound. If mechanical and chemical forces worked together, the wound would close at a much faster rate. Overall, I have created a model that can give a complete picture of cell movement during wound healing. The model is kept accurate by its close ties with reality, based on observation from actual wound healing videos. Agent-based modeling allows me to explicitly write the local causes of this overarching behavior, allowing me and future scientists to focus on specific forces for future biological study.

Imagine being plunged perpetually into a silence where the ubiquity of sound is irrelevant. That is the world which many students in my high school experience. My inspiration for this project really came from the students in my high school’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) program. My school has a department which offers a high school education to DHH students across Orange County. The students in this program take many of the same classes as the other students, using an interpreter to understand the lectures. I befriended several DHH students, but one in particular stood out to me: a boy in Cross Country who was deaf but used a device called the cochlear implant to hear. During the team’s annual trip to Yosemite each summer, he picked a song on a friend’s MP3 player and played it. He then told the group that the song he chose was his favorite song. This moment inspired me, as it showed me that even deaf individuals could find enjoyment from music. As a pianist for 12 years, I felt an urge to help him and other DHH students fully experience the wonders of music … So let me give a bit of background information on the cochlear implant. The cochlear implant bypasses the outer, middle, and inner ear by sending electrical stimulation directly up the auditory nerve to the temporal lobes of the brain. This electrical stimulation mimics the natural electrical signals produced by the hair cells in the cochlea, and the implant users are able to interpret this as sound. Because it completely bypasses the ear, this device enables otherwise deaf or critically hard of hearing individuals to hear.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an auto-immune disease that attacks the central nervous system. Almost 10,000 people are diagnosed every year, and depending on age, at least 40% of people with MS are unemployed, suggesting the severity of its debilitation within society. Specifically, it occurs when the immune system attacks the myelin sheath, a protective coating around the axons of nerve cells of the brain. The myelin sheath is composed of white matter, functioning to help nerve cells send signals quickly and smoothly throughout the brain. When it is damaged (this occurs in MS), signals cannot be sent throughout the body as quickly or efficiently. The Central Nervous System (CNS) has varied bodily functions; therefore, individuals with MS experience numerous symptoms, such as vision problems, trouble walking, and severe cognitive and physical fatigue. Such a wide range of symptoms calls for very extensive and broad treatment plans; therefore it is important to understand as many of these symptoms as possible in order to treat MS patients efficiently and effectively. One of the more common, and noticeable, symptoms in MS is Impaired Self-Awareness (ISA). Self-Awareness is the ability to understand one�s own disabilities and capabilities. People who have impaired self-awareness are unable to understand all of the problems that MS causes them, such as reduced physical capabilities or cognitive fatigue. Although ISA has been studied extensively in MS and other neurological conditions like Traumatic Brain Injury, very little is known about its neurological underpinnings … This study seeks to examine the following: 1) Different types of self-awareness, since self-awareness can be impaired cognitively, behaviorally, and physically. 2) Since white matter integrity is related to executive functioning, and self-awareness is a type of executive functioning, this study seeks to examine if reduced white matter volume will be directly correlated with reduced self-awareness

I began to appreciate such simplicity, and to redefine my understanding of mathematics. I came to see it as being much more than just its constituent symbols and equations, but a beautiful language capable of describing the logical foundations of all the natural sciences. Over time, that same beauty began to appear everywhere I looked … Aortic stenosis (AS) is a lethal disease that can lead to severe cardiac complications if left untreated. A new type of non-invasive treatment for AS, transcatheter aortic-valve replacement (TAVR), exhibits comparable success rates in comparison with conventional surgical aortic valve replacement. Nevertheless, it also demonstrates significantly greater rates of paravalvular regurgitation, a serious complication associated with increased rates of later mortality. In this study, we achieve three main objectives. First, we design a computer program for automatic 2-dimensional measurement of the aortic annulus that is statistically non-inferior to radiologists’ manual measurements. Secondly, we use these measurements in addition to the Agatston calcium score to identify significant predictor variables of paravalvular regurgitation. At a significance level of 0.05, the predictor variables were identified to be aortic valve calcification and prosthesis mis-sizing. Lastly, we use these predictor variables to construct a multivariate Bayesian model that predicts the incidence of moderate post-TAVR paravalvular aortic regurgitation with 70% accuracy, highlighting its potential for clinical use in recommending patients to the appropriate AS treatment. In light of the fact that 50% of medically treated AS patients die within two years of onset of symptoms and as many as 30% of these patients cannot undergo surgery, TAVR is a life-saving procedure that has the potential to positively impact many patients’ lives. Since TAVR cannot be conducted safely without prior assessment of risk, the proposed risk-stratification model reflects a significant advancement in AS patient care.

I saw the letter E, big, black and bold. Now read me line six, the nurse said, pointing to a row of blurry rectangles. I squinted and took my best educated guess, but the nurse frowned, scribbling a note on her clipboard. The second week of first grade, I had failed my first test. The school vision test was the one (and usually only) exam I failed each year. It became somewhat of a routine, seeing the school nurse, squinting at the fuzzy shapes on the eye chart, finding myself in the optometrist’s office a week later. The doctor would check my eyes, shake his head, and write out a prescription for new glasses . . . Two years ago, I stumbled upon something that would change my life. At a gathering of family friends, my mother noticed that one of her friend’s daughters, who used to wear glasses, was now free of spectacles. The casual comment of ‘How do your contacts feel?’ revealed that the girl was not, in fact, wearing any contacts. Not at the time, anyway, she had been fitted with overnight orthokeratology (ortho-k) contact lenses, a special type of rigid contact lens that is worn at night. During sleep these lenses reshape the cornea, and during the day the molded cornea effectively acts like a natural contact lens, eliminating the need for glasses or contacts during the day . . . I did some more research online and found that not all contact lenses are created equal when it comes to protein deposition. Most studies showed that soft lenses (such as those worn during the day) tend to attract more protein than hard lenses (such as those used in ortho-k). This seemed to answer the question of why I could wear these ortho-k lenses, but not my previous soft contacts, at night. As I was about to leave the page, however, I came across another article, this one saying that tears in the eye at night actually have a very different protein composition from those of the day. I looked back at the previous articles comparing hard and soft contacts, and found that all of them were indeed done during the day, none of them at night. There was a void here, one that this project begins to fill.

My interest in cardiovascular health stems from a range of factors. There is currently a health epidemic in the United States: our largely unhealthy lifestyles, fatty and high-cholesterol diet, and lacking exercise, combine with genetic factors, contribute to some of the highest levels of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. In fact heart disease is prevalent in most developed and some developing countries, contributing to more deaths then cancer and HIV combined, worldwide. Heart disease causes are often misleading; for instance, obesity has been linked to heart disease for decades, yet many who suffer from cardiovascular ailments are slim and hardly fit this profile. In the past several decades, elevated blood cholesterol das been linked to heart disease. Though cholesterol is essential for numerous physiological functions, it is well documented that the long-term effects of elevated levels of plasma cholesterol pose a significant health risk and is causal to diseases including angina, cardiovascular disorders, and diabetes. However, the short-term effect of elevated plasma cholesterol was unknown, and this is what I set out to determine . . . My project was unique due to several reasons. First of all, the study was the first that set out to determine the role of elevated cell plasma membrane cholesterol on water and gas transport into the red blood cell. Second, the study was designed to determine the molecular underpinnings of the impairments of elevated plasma membrane cholesterol, and furthermore, new and novel approaches were used to conduct the study.

Autism is a mental disorder that impairs the mental and social development of children on their way to adulthood. Not everyone with autism has the same severity of symptoms and therefore researchers refer to the variance of the disorder as autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In recent years, there has been an increase in children diagnosed with autism (Groom, 2009). Reasons for such a peak in diagnoses range from a vaccine link to simply just more accurate methods of testing (Downs, 2009). No matter the cause, children with ASDs need assistance in progressing as individuals throughout life. . . The topic of autism is very personal to me. Due to the fact that my brother has autism, I have always been intrigued by the progress he has made with behavioral intervention. I want to help others with ASDs communicate and express their feelings just like any regular person has the luxury of doing. By increasing positive behavior in children with autism, they would gain the ability to socialize with normal peers and enjoy the same experiences a normal functioning child goes through. Numerous types of interventions have been implemented to aid kids with autism. These interventions span various settings and conditions, which creates a sense of spontaneity that these kids would otherwise lack. Decreasing bad behavior in kids with autism during school hours allows teachers to maximize the children’s potential . . . There is a great demand for successful interventions in the realm of behavioral intervention for children with autism. Much attention has been paid to behavioral interventions such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA) and the Lovaas method, but such a strict, rigorous method can be very hard on the parents. The treatment in this experiment is known as a social story technique, and it can be a lot less time-intensive and therefore a very useful tool for parents if it is effective.

Autism is a mental disorder that impairs the mental and social development of children on their way to adulthood. Not everyone with autism has the same severity of symptoms and therefore researchers refer to the variance of the disorder as autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In recent years, there has been an increase in children diagnosed with autism (Groom, 2009). Reasons for such a peak in diagnoses range from a vaccine link to simply just more accurate methods of testing (Downs, 2009). No matter the cause, children with ASDs need assistance in progressing as individuals throughout life. . . The topic of autism is very personal to me. Due to the fact that my brother has autism, I have always been intrigued by the progress he has made with behavioral intervention. I want to help others with ASDs communicate and express their feelings just like any regular person has the luxury of doing. By increasing positive behavior in children with autism, they would gain the ability to socialize with normal peers and enjoy the same experiences a normal functioning child goes through. Numerous types of interventions have been implemented to aid kids with autism. These interventions span various settings and conditions, which creates a sense of spontaneity that these kids would otherwise lack. Decreasing bad behavior in kids with autism during school hours allows teachers to maximize the children’s potential . . . There is a great demand for successful interventions in the realm of behavioral intervention for children with autism. Much attention has been paid to behavioral interventions such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA) and the Lovaas method, but such a strict, rigorous method can be very hard on the parents. The treatment in this experiment is known as a social story technique, and it can be a lot less time-intensive and therefore a very useful tool for parents if it is effective.

How many times does a child hear his or her parent say, turn your phone off before going to bed or don’t sleep with your phone on next to you or stop texting at night because you won’t get enough sleep? I know I’ve heard those words countless times. But, I’ve always wondered if using my phone, or any other technological device, could actually hinder me from getting the best quality sleep I can get. This is what led me to develop my present study for the Intel Science Talent Search competition. I was curious as to whether or not there was truth to what my parents had been saying to me for all these years . . . One word of advice for those who are interested in undertaking a project combining science and mathematics would be to choose a topic of interest. What kept me going and helped me to focus on my task was the fact that I was eager to find out if my hypotheses were true. I was genuinely interested in my topic. I think that having a firm interest in one’s research is the best way to ensure success.

I always loved career day as an elementary student because I was able to share that my dad was a rocket scientist. Maybe he was not the astronaut flying into space or sitting in the control room, but I believed he had the coolest job because he was the engineer designing new space cameras . . . My passion for innovation was somewhat out of the ordinary because I was facing a challenge that was very real for me. At age 5, I was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition that results in severe visual impairment. Through my various Google and WebMD queries, I found that there were limited answers relating to the diagnosis and treatment of my condition. However, as I matured I realized that I did not need to wait for other scientists to find the answers: I could find them myself . . . After several all-night brainstorming sessions, I approached my research teacher Mr. Kurtz one morning to present my idea. I said that I wanted to invent a computer program that could predict the effects of mutations in disease.

I have long been fascinated by math, and more recently by biology. When my high school presented the opportunity to participate in research at a local university two years ago, I looked for a project that could help me see how the mathematics I learned in the classroom could be applied to help us better understand questions in biology . . . My advisor found Dr. David Eisenberg’s lab at the Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA, a lab studying, among other things, amyloid fibers and Alzheimer’s disease. I was introduced to Dr. James Stroud, who had developed a method applying Bayes’ theorem to data of amyloid fiber formation. With James’ help, I began working on writing code to create realistic simulations to test and refine the method. By testing the method and improving it where possible, we created a method that can be used to analyze real data . . When I began working in the lab, I knew next to nothing about Bayes’ theorem or amyloid fibers. Diving into the project meant learning things from an area of mathematics completely foreign to me, and simultaneously attempting to apply it to the real world. With a lot of help from my mentor, I came to understand and even contribute to the project.

I guess I was always meant to be a scientist. My aunt who used to babysit me could entertain me for hours with nothing but a glass of water, some spices, and a spoon. Performing my independent research, however, was the first time I ever did science for the purpose of helping others. My family does not have the best genes out there we have a history of a variety of diseases that are so far untreatable . . . I decided that cancer therapy, and by extension all medical treatments, could be done better. My interest in biology narrowed to an interest in medicine, and I started to look for ways to get involved . . . Systemic Lupus Erythematosis (SLE or lupus) is a chronic autoimmune disease affecting 1.4 million Americans, 9 in 10 of whom are women according to Lupus.org

I wanted to work on something related to game theory. During my sophomore and junior years, I had bounced back and forth between various math concepts, but I always came back to game theory because it can describe interpersonal interactions in mathematical terms, an idea that was very intriguing to me. However, I looked for something beyond game theory’s most common applications, namely in economics, social psychology, and evolutionary biology. While searching for this new application of game theory, I noticed that cells, especially cancer cells, can behave strategically. The development of a malignant tumor requires the emergence of more aggressive subclones of cells. I imagined that during the development of malignancy, there must be some form of competition4 and cooperation5 among the tumor cells. Each individual cell can be a player with a strategy determined by its phenotype. With these thoughts in mind, I began researching the possibility of applying game theory to cancer.

Four years ago, I began helping out at a school for children with autism: At the time, I saw this as an opportunity to give back to my community, with no idea that it would one day end up being the topic of my scientific research. I spent my time acting as both a volunteer and social mentor during summer programs, weekend trips, special events, and school days. A year later, my involvement with the autism community evolved as I began to recruit and organize students from my own high school to participate in volunteering and fundraising events for autism. By the third year, my junior year, I helped implement a program in my high school where teenagers with autism were brought into our building once every few weeks to have lunch with their neuro-typical peers . . . The original intent of such a program was to expose the kids with autism to appropriate social interaction, something many of them struggled with. The program turned out to have numerous other benefits; for one, it opened the eyes of my own peers to the hardships that people with disabilities face. Additionally, it was this program that first got me thinking that autism might be the perfect fit for the topic of my research. Observing the interactions between the teenagers with autism and their neuro-typical peers, I quickly noticed their seemingly deficient ability to gauge the emotions of the people to whom they were talking. As one would imagine, this makes maintaining a conversation substantially more difficult. These observations all happened around the time during which I was focused on developing a research project, so I decided I’d look into the current literature to determine whether what I’d been witnessing was a legitimate, documented problem for children with autism. And I found that, in many cases, it was.

Before high school, I was never the one whose favorite subject was science. I loved to hang out with friends, read, and write; a future in science had never particularly appealed to me. My first week of high school changed that. Through the Science Research Program at my school, I have been able to have the amazing opportunity to work in a cancer research laboratory at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY, one full day a week, as well as 2-3 days after school, and 3-4 weeks during the summer. Before applying to and entering the program, I thought science was simply looking under a microscope at cells, a more complex version of what we did in biology class. Through my experience in the lab, science has become a portal to an unending source of knowledge, one that I know very little of. I’ve come to realize that science, the subject that never interested me, is really so cool.

Adolescents who exercise regularly are less likely to be overweight or obese. The population chosen is adolescents in the age group of 12 to 19. Adolescent overweight and obesity is very prevalent in the United States. Results of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 2) 2003-04 study points out that 16% of adolescents nationwide are overweight. It is a huge human health issue because obesity increases the risk of serious health conditions like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Obese and overweight adolescents may also prone to low self-esteem that stems from being teased and bullied. Other diseases related to obesity are liver & gall bladder disease, depression, sleep disorders, bone and joint problems…

I hear like an 85-year-old man, but I am not alone. Twenty-five million Americans are already affected by hearing loss (Hearing lost statistics), and this staggering number is expected to double by 2050 (qtd. in Schmid), especially considering how many students are currently damaging their ears by the combination of loud music and earphones. What they do not realize is that sound has a physical force that damages the stereocilia, the delicate hair cells in the cochlea that pick up vibrations. Once broken, those cells do not regenerate. The vast majority of people can expect hearing damage as they age. Others, like me, have damage from ototoxins; life-saving drugs like the ones that saved my life as a premature infant can cause unfortunate hearing impairment. That is the personal problem that led to my two-year science project, Do You =ear What I =ear?, which explores the revolutionary concept of lowering sounds in pitch rather than simply making them louder. Current hearing aid technology is still based on increasing the volume; however, I know from personal experience that hearing aids really do not work well…

Dengue fever affects 50-100 million people annually (Rigau, 1998). Scientists have recently developed genetic manipulation techniques to create transgenic mosquitoes refractory to disease transmission. The success of this strategy hinges on the dispersal of such genes throughout a population via matings of transgenic with wild-type mosquitoes. However, little is known about mating competitiveness of transgenic mosquitoes, or female mating patterns of mosquitoes in general . . . This study explored assortative mating of mosquitoes. Mating frequencies when a wildtype female mosquito was exposed to ten wild-type and ten mutant (Higgs white-eye) males were evaluated. The twenty males were placed in a bucket cage and a female was introduced. Immediately after copulation, the pair was aspirated out and the male eye color examined to determine its phenotype. A male of the same phenotype was replaced and the procedure repeated. A majority of matings resulted in the copulation of mutant males with wild-type females…

First noted in the United States in 1980, the obesity epidemic has since increased twofold in recent decades. In the 21st century, obesity has become one of the leading health problems in the United States; over 34% of all adults age 20 years and over and 18% of all children age 6-11 years are obese (CDC Faststats, Obesity and Overweight). In fact, obesity is more prevalent in the United States than in other Westernized country. With obesity comes a vast array of health concerns including hypertension, glaucoma, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, certain cancers and heart disease. According to the National Institutes of Health, obesity is one of the leading cause of preventable death in the US, second only to tobacco usage; obesity-related conditions cause approximately 300,000 deaths a year . . . As a sophomore in high school, I did not know much about the obesity epidemic and I vaguely understood the concept of eating healthy and exercising regularly. When I first entered the basement of the Neurological Institute of New York, I did not plan on applying to the Intel Competition nor had I decided to obesity research. Rather, I joined the Columbia University Medical Center’s Program for Imaging and Cognitive Sciences (PICS) at the end of sophomore year because a strange fascination with the brain . . . I wanted to understand why individuals found food so mouthwateringly attractive, and how the brain normally controls food intake; using the resources provided at the fMRI lab, I hope to better understand and prevent obesity and save lives…

The economy, presidential election, and Middle Eastern affairs usually take the forefront in today’s media. However, looming behind the news of rising and falling gas prices is a most alarming domestic issue, namely the obesity epidemic. There has been an occasional eye-opener, such as the documentary “Super Size Me,” to force Americans to realize the enormity of this issue. Still, some Americans neglect to acknowledge the pounds accumulating directly onto their bodies. The number of obese citizens in the United States has increased at a frightening rate during the past several years because Americans obsess on fattening foods. A typical nutritional philosophy is the backbone of the problem: fast food is cheap, filling, and great tasting, so why not eat it? . . . As an eating disorder, obesity heightens vulnerability to life-threatening conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory problems…..

Inflammation occurs when leukocytes (white blood cells) leave the blood stream by passing between endothelial cells, the cells that line the walls of blood vessels, and move into the surrounding tissue. Endothelial cells actively change shape to allow leukocytes to pass between them, but this requires an increase in surface area that would not normally be allowed by a cell membrane. To allow this shape change, extra membrane and molecules that assist in the migration of the leukocytes are released from a compartment in endothelial cells called the Lateral Border Recycling Compartment (LBRC). The membrane in this compartment is constantly recycling in and out of the cell. This recycling is important in inflammation, but is very difficult to study experimentally and much is unknown about it.

All throughout my life, I have felt very strongly for those who suffer from Cerebral Palsy (A neural disorder that is marked by physical [such as spastic tendencies] and cognitive difficulties). That is why I volunteered at the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy in Kolkata, India during the summer of 2005. During my interactions and studies with these children, I saw that they really enjoy interacting with computers but did not have the proper means to do it, and I felt that Sharpgent software could aid them in their studies and careers tremendously.

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.