In mid-May, junior Allison Jia was named one of two winners of the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair! Jia’s project, which studied proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases, won her a $50,000 prize! It also was named Best in Category for cell and molecular biology and won a First Award, earning Jia an additional $5,000 and $1,000, respectively.

Senior Ruhi Sayana also did well at the fair, winning a $10,000 scholarship from the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association for her project in the biomedical and health sciences category, in which she also won a $1,000 Third Award from Intel ISEF and a $500 Second Award from the Ashtavadhani Vidwan Ambati Subbaraya Chetty Foundation. In the computational biology and informatics category, junior Cynthia Chen received a Third Award of $1,000. All three students won trips to the Intel ISEF at the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science & Technology Championship in March.

Jia’s efforts were writtten up in several publications:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/07/16/stem-competitions-science-fair-olympiad-gender-disparities/#.XS49oi2ZOi4

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton/2019/05/29/meet-the-four-students-who-won-185000-at-the-isef-science-fair-infographic/

https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2019-05-17/16-year-old-engineer-works-to-improve-spinal-surgery-using-machine-learning-and-computer-vision

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_International_Science_and_Engineering_Fair

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/10/girls-in-science-feature/ (Included in slideshow that accompanies the article)