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Young Scientists Get Exciting News; Nine Bay Area Students Are Chosen By Intel Science Talent Search
By Sharon Noguchi
San Jose Mercury News
12 January 2006
Cardiac patients, take heart: Young scientists like Mahncy Mehrotra are already developing ways to unblock your arteries.
Mahncy, 17, a senior at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, learned Wednesday that she was selected as one of 300 semifinalists nationwide in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search. For her project, she grew and tested mouse stem cells. Ultimately, such research could lead to creating human blood vessels to replace blocked or defective ones.
Mahncy was surprised at 8:30 a.m. when Intel representatives and Principal Noreen Likens walked into her English class.
``You have exceptional scientific knowledge and ability,'' said Intel representative Tami Casey. ``We would like to welcome you to this elite group.''
Mahncy, shaking but poised, said later, ``I definitely wasn't expecting English today to be that interesting.''
Intel presented an oversize check -- for $1,000 to each of the winners and another $1,000 to their schools -- and a fistful of balloons in ceremonies at high schoolsacross the nation.
Among the winners were three San Jose students. Kate Brown at Presentation High School experimented with urea uptake in growing nasturtiums; Julie Boiko, home-schooled in San Jose, studied allergenic antibodies; Yi Sun at the Harker School developed a new base for units of electromagnetism. Jason Gao of Mission San Jose High in Fremont developed a robot to detect radiation. His classmate Angelo Mao studied enzymes and bio-gas production.
More than 1,550 students entered the science talent search, formerly sponsored by Westinghouse. (For a list of the 300 Intel semifinalists, see <http://www.sciserv.org/sts/65sts/06semis.asp>www.sciserv.org/sts/65sts/06semis.asp .) From those, top scientists will choose 40 finalists, who will win a trip to the Intel Science Talent Institute in Washington, D.C. The winners will be announced March 14, for what is sometimes called the junior Nobel Prize.
In the award's 64-year history, its winners have gone on to win six Nobel Prizes, three National Medals of Science and 10 MacArthur Foundation fellowships.
Last summer, Mahncy arranged to intern in the vascular surgery research lab, part of Stanford's Bio X program, which is researching tissue engineering -- how to coax stem cells to grow into blood vessels.
Oscar Abilez, a postdoctoral fellow who supervised the project, said Mahncy spent every day last summer in the lab. ``She's very good, very creative, very inquisitive,'' he said.
Her interest in science was cultivated early, inspired by her cousin, Manish Bansal, who is now a pediatric oncologist.
Her parents, Sanjay and Sangeeta Mehrotra, said their daughter is very focused. ``Whatever she does, she likes to do it very well,'' said Sanjay Mehrotra, an engineer and co-founder of SanDisk, an electronics firm.
Contact Sharon Noguchi at (650) 688-7576 or snoguchi@mercurynews.com
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