American Girls Know Their Science
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- 7/26/2011 |
- 10:00 am
Among 10,000 students from 91 countries, girls from American schools finished in the Top 3 overall at Google's first-ever international science fair. A 17 year-old from Fort Worth won the grand prize, taking home $50,000 in college money for her research on ovarian cancer.
Not bad for a girl that's barely old enough to drive a car.
This article in the New York Times tells us about Shree Bose's lifelong curiosity about the world of science. When she was in second grade, she tried to make blue spinach. By the time she was in fourth grade, she'd graduated to a remote-controlled garbage can. In eigth grade: a railroad tie made from recycled plastic and granite dust, which was good enough to get her into the top 30 of national science competition.
But Shree is now getting attention for her analysis of drug resistance in chemotherapy patients, which is the project that won her top honors at the Google Science Fair. By identifying a cellular energy protein that helps extend the effective life span of a particular chemo drug, Shree has paved a new road for cancer research.
In addition to the college bankroll, she'll also receive a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands and a separate trip to the CERN particle physics lab in Switzerland. Which is, when you stop and think about it, pretty awesome in its own right.
Of the 10,000+ science fair entries made online, 60 were selected as semifinalists. From there, 15 were picked as finalists and flown to Google's Silicon Valley headquarters to present their work to a panel of judges.
Other top finishers included Naomi Shah of Oregon, who won the age 15-16 category with a study of the effects of air quality on lungs, and Lauren Hodge of Pennsylvania, who won the age 13-14 category for research into the effect that marinades have on grilled meat. (Does it surprise you to find out that marinating your meat in lemon juice or brown sugar cuts carcinogen levels, while a soy sauce marinade increases those levels?)
Says Shree Bose -- in a line that sounds tailor-made for The Big Brain Club -- when discussing her blue spinach project from the second grade: "Sounds like a weird beginning, but after that I just realized that science is cool, it's something I want to do. And it's just been getting better from there."
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