Okay, so Cogitorians didn't literally “rock,” but there were mineral-related projects there! Monday, the public project exhibition day for the Intel STS finalists, was a glorious, sunny day in DC. Inside the National Academy of Sciences at the exhibition, eight of the 40 Intel STS finalists were Cogito members.
Five Cogito members ended up placing in the top ten spots. Reporters roamed around with sound and video equipment, and Cogito was filming, too (yes, it's a first, but now we have our own YouTube channel so keep an eye out for more – and send in your ideas about how we can put it to good use).
I interviewed several of the finalists at the exhibition on-camera before they were whisked off for a meeting with President Obama at the White House. The first video is of third-place Intel STS winner and long-time Cogito member Philip Streich talking about his project, which provided the first quantifiable evidence that nanotubes are thermodynamically soluble, meaning that they can be unbundled in a solvent and stay unbundled for use in thin layers. Watch the video interview with Philip to find out why he calls nanotubes the “superhero” of materials, why he and his research (and business) partners think they've got a graphene revolution on their hands, and what that could mean for solar cells, renewable energy, and people around the world who can't afford solar cells.
Preya Shah, also a Cogitorian since the beta version launched in the fall of 2006, placed eighth (winning a $20,000 college scholarship) with her biochemistry project. Working in a lab Stony Brook University, Preya designed and synthesized a new drug for cancer chemotherapy. The drug is designed to attach only to cancer cells, which will hopefully result in fewer side effects than the many chemotherapy drugs that simply target all rapidly dividing cells--including normal, healthy ones. After the drug attaches, it is also designed to deliver two “warheads” -- separate agents that should kill the cancer cells. “The next step,” says Preya, “is to test the effect of the drug on cancer and normal cells. If this approach works we can use this as a model for developing a whole new generation of drugs for treating drug-resistant cancers.” Watch our video interview of Preya.
Read about all top ten winners and all 40 finalists, with links to videos and news stories about them.
Thanks to everyone who talked to me, both on- and off-camera, and congratulations to all the competitors! Other Cogitorians in the finalist pool (the finalists received a $5,000 scholarship and a new laptop) were:
Preya Shah of New York won 8th place and a $20,000 scholarship with her novel cancer drug project. Watch an interview.
- William Sun (2nd place) of Missouri with his project “Characterization of Golgicide A, a Highly Selective Novel Small Molecule Inhibitor of Intracellular Transport Pathways”
- Noah Arbesfeld (6th place) of Massachusetts with his project “On the Structure of Lower Central Series Quotients of a Free Associative Algebra”
- Alexander Kim (7th place) of Virginia with his project “Morphological and Molecular Phylogeography of a Giant American River Prawn, Macrobrachium carcinus”
- Elizabeth Coquillette of Ohio with her project “Autonomous Human-Seeking Robot”
- Nitish Lakhanpal of California with his project “An Investigation into the Folding of Beta Structures in a Class of Pathologically-Relevant Proteins: Computational Prediction of Secondary and Super-Secondary Structure from Primary Amino Acid Sequence”
Be sure to look for more about these young scientists and their projects in the weeks to come on Cogito, and check out our new YouTube Channel.