 "Photo: Curt Youngblood, Daily Texan Staff")
Nayana Ghosh-Choudhury hopes to provide better treatment to breast cancer patients through her project, which she presented at the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology at UT on Saturday.
Ghosh-Choudhury, a senior at Northside Health Careers High School in San Antonio, said she worked on her project for three years. Her research suggested that statins can block breast tumor growth.
“Breast cancer runs in the family,” she said. “My great-grandmother died of it, and my grandmother was just diagnosed. I think it’s really important to find better treatments for patients.”
The national competition’s regional finals took place at San Jacinto Hall on Friday and Saturday. Individual and teams of high school students can enter the competition. Five individual participants competed for a $3,000 college scholarship, while five teams competed for a $6,000 scholarship.
Wen Chyan, a senior at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science in Denton, Texas, won the individual prize for his project, which is designed to prevent nosocomial infections — infections that result from hospital treatment. Erika DeBenedictis and Duanni Huang of Albuquerque, N.M., won the team catergory for their project, which provides a better way to program multi-core architecture for computers. The winners will advance to the national finals at New York University in December.
Nearly 1,900 high school students registered for the competition, a record number for the foundation. Of the 1,205 submissions received, 96 students advanced to the regional finals. There are six regions nationally, and Texas’ region includes nine other states. UT has hosted all 10 regional competitions.
“Austin has become high-tech,” said Thomas McCausland, chairman of the Siemens Foundation. “High-technology industries need scientists and people fluent within these fields. We want to stimulate more learning in science and engineering in high schools.”
The Siemens Foundation is a nonprofit organization focused on math, science, engineering and technology education. It is a branch of the Siemens Corporation.
“Because our parent organization is an engineering and technology company, we want to reward excellence in these fields,” said Valerie Francois, educational outreach manager for the foundation. “We’re concerned about the future workforce, and we’re hoping to inspire students to go into these fields.”
Be the first to comment on this article!