We were just as excited as the rest of the STEM world (science, technology, engineering, and math) when we heard about Angela Zhang's winning project for the 2011 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. We've been tweeting and sharing it for a week or so, but it's high time to do a blog post on it!
If you haven't heard yet, Angela Zhang is the 17-year-old high school student from Cupertino, California who won this year's competition with her cancer-targetting nano-robot. Her project was officially titled, "Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells -- Biochemistry."
To put it a little more simply, Angela designed a multifunctional nanoparticle that can deliver both drug therapy and imaging oxides directly to the site of a tumor. It allows for cancerous cells to be treated and viewed (as through MRI imaging) without damaging the surrounding, healthy cells. This system could potentially overcome some of the biggest issues with fighting cancer by overcoming cancer resistance, minimizing undesirable side effects, and allowing for real-time monitoring, from the inside of the body, of how treatments are working.
Under the mentorship of Stanford professor Dr. Zhen Cheng, Angela put in 1,000 hours on this project.
More Winners!
Brian Kim from New York was runner-up for the Siemens Competition. He examined packing and covering geometric shapes to study how to efficiently pack more objects into an area. It's a deceptively simple-sounding idea, but one whose study requires some ingenuity. Brian called vectors the "power tools" with which he explored this problem. Sitan (Stan) Chen's research was "The Rank Number of Grid Graphs -- Mathematics" which could "potentially result in a new method of studying graphs."
if you want to get some math inspiration and read up on more winners, go to http://www.siemens-foundation.org/en/competition/2011_winners.htm
