Science Fairs as Pathways To Passion, Problem-Solving and Careers

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Backslash, New Pathways. What is the future of science? Priscilla, why does science affairs matter? Science for a matter because they inspire the future. And when you see a student, you know, most people see us, you know, just a regular kid sitting there.

And as a science teacher, I see a future cure to cancer, a future, you know, solution to ocean pollution, a future solution to all the different problems that we have, you know, in our world and on Earth. And so they matter because by doing so, you inspire the problem solvers of the future. Basically, you’re touching the future. You’re listening to the Gingspart podcast.

I’m Tom VanderRick and we’re talking about one of my favorite topics today, that’s science fairs and STEM deep dives. We have three extraordinary guests to help us on that journey. A little bit of background. Two years ago, we spoke with Maya Ajmiraj. She’s the CEO of Society for Science.

And here in the United States, they’re the big champions of science fairs. They are the host for two important competitions. They’re both sponsored by Regeneron. The first one is the International Science and Engineering Fair. And the second one is the Regeneron Science Talent Search.

So you’ll hear us talk a little bit about both of those competitions today. We’re going to talk to two young women that have done quite well in those competitions. We have a couple of young women here today, including Anika Puri. Anika is a recent graduate of Horace Greeley High School in Chapokawa. And she’s an incoming freshman at MIT.

That’s awesome, Anika. Hi. Hello. And you’re joining us from the Czech Republic. Yes, I am currently in the Czech Republic.

I forgot to ask you, what are you doing there? We’re actually just on a vacation right now, kind of exploring the history of Prague. That’s super awesome. When does MIT start? Actually, right as soon as we return, I’m moving in the next day.

So orientation starts then, yeah. We’re also joined by La Letia. She is a student at Columbia University and participated both in the Regeneron Science Talent Search as well as the International Science and Engineering Fair. La Letia, where are you today?

Are you back in Cincinnati? Yeah, I’m back in Cincinnati. I was in New York for most of the summer interning, but I’m back home for a couple weeks. That’s awesome. I found out that you are a violinist as well as a science genius.

I am. Which came first, the violin or science? I would argue both to go hand in hand, just in terms of their approaches to creativity and things like that. I was always really interested in music and science at the same time.

So they’re kind of two different limbs of the same person. That’s awesome. Did your mom or dad support both your interest in science and your interest in music? Yeah, they’ve both been incredibly supportive of that entire process that I’ve gone through. I think the violin and its creative approaches really pushed my innovation and techniques

in my STEM research as well. Have you started at Columbia or is it starting next week? So Columbia, I moved in actually in early September. We start pretty late, so we end kind of late as well. And you’re going into your second year there?

And you had a pretty good first year in bioscience? Yeah, so I’m majoring in biomedical engineering and I’m actually minoring in political science. I’m really interested at the intersection of STEM and public policy. We got to come back and dive into that topic. Anika, you studied elephants.

How did you find out that elephant poaching was a problem? And then how in the world did you dream up this machine learning video capture solution to try to reduce the amount of poaching? Yeah, so I was actually visiting India with my family in the summer of 2018. And we were visiting just like a market in Bombay and there was just rows of ivory jewelry, ivory statues. And I was quite surprised because I was a little naive where I thought poaching is illegal.

How come it really is still such a big issue? And so that really caused me to think about if it is still such a big issue, what is currently happening in national parks? And so we actually have a research program in my school and that really gave me the opportunity to sort of look deeper into what are the current solutions? And that’s really when I started realizing that the current solutions either include doing this work manually, like looking through a video, trying to find these little, little poachers on the screen, which as you can imagine, very error prone.

Or recent research actually has worked automated a little bit where they’re utilizing the shape of the object. But because drones have to fly at such high altitudes, those kind of animals or elephants are coming as little, little dogs. So you can imagine identifying an animal solely based off of its shape can be quite difficult. And so that’s when I started thinking about, you know, what are some other characteristics that we could be using? And I was just watching videos of elephants and humans and I started noticing, you know, their movement patterns are quite different.

And I utilized that we could potentially use this disparity in order to actually increase the accuracy of detecting poachers. So yeah, I guess that was kind of where it all began. I’m curious where your introduction to AI started. Did you take the like the computer science principles course and learn a little bit about machine learning and where was it? I think my journey with computer science started with like, you know, scratch and like, you know, doing little computer science blocks.

And I think that was really when I started getting really interested in like, I guess the world of computer science. And actually in the summer of my ninth grade, I was fortunate to be selected for the Stanford AI Live Summer Program. And I think that was really where I was introduced to, you know, this entire new world of artificial intelligence. And I learned more. Is that the AI for all program?

Yeah, exactly. Oh, that’s awesome. Did you go to a summer program? Where was it in California? It was at Stanford.

It was 30 girls and it was just like a kind of like I found a new community of just like, you know, 30 other girls who were just as passionate about, you know, learning more about artificial intelligence and, you know, learning, you know, just even the basics of like coding and learning about like, you know, what is artificial intelligence? Is it, you know, I think we all come up with this like, you know, I guess initial thought of, oh, it’s going to take over the world. You know, really, what is it? How does it work? And, you know, how can we learn how to? I’m curious what adults supported your deep dive in this project?

Did the idea start in school or out of school and were any teachers at school supportive of your exploration? Oh, yeah, I would definitely say I have a huge support system, both in school, out of school. And in school, we have a science research program in which my teacher, Dr. Pappanik has been a huge support. She’s always willing to, you know, provide feedback. She’s taught us so much about, you know, just like how to present, how to, you know, read these research articles where you’re coming into 10th grade.

It’s like, you know, these articles can be a little bit intimidating. So she really teaches you how to kind of read through these articles and essentially how she helps you along the research journey. And I think out of school as well, my parents and my sister have been a huge support system for me and, you know, always supporting me along the journey, even along the challenges. Lalitya, I think you graduated from the Mason High, is that right? We’re a fan of the Mason schools.

You must have some great science teachers there. Is that part of where your interest in science was cultivated? Yeah, so Mason is kind of a traditional public high school. So we actually didn’t have a research program when I first started as a freshman. So I was actually one of the people who was able to get science fair kind of running and started at my high school, which was really exciting.

We started off with just a handful of kids my freshman year and it grew to like we sent over 30 to 40 kids to states by my senior year. And we’re still continually growing. That’s something that I’m really proud of. And so part of that because I didn’t have access to a traditional research program. I also relied more on other assets to kind of get me through my research and actually help me progress with my project as well. Lalitya, did you have both faculty at Mason High and people in the community that were supportive of this effort?

Yeah, for sure. So I’m actually currently working with the Greater Cincinnati Water Works to get my work implemented for initial real world testing. It’s basically my device just to give a little hint of it is a method to detect microbial contaminants in water through AI processing. And so it’s basically this device that you can put directly into water pipes to hopefully mitigate the spread of contaminants through an entire community’s water supply. Given your leadership on science fairs, you must have done several different deep dives. Could you tell us about one or two projects that you did in high school?

Yeah, so the one that I focused on primarily was this method called NERID, which is a method to detect microbial contamination in water through an analysis. So it’s basically this device and it takes microscopic images of water using a DIY camera that I made, runs it through AI processing to determine if any contaminants are present, and then can notify local authorities if any contaminants are present. So the goal of this is to kind of ensure that these contaminants don’t spread through the entire water supply and hopefully we’re able to catch them early on enough so people don’t face the adverse health effects as well. Really, you spoke about the intersection of science and policy, but I’m struck that both of you constructed solutions to gnarly problems that required science, technology and policy.

They’re really in this triangle of the three. Is that fair? And it sounds like that’s an area of interest for you going forward. Yeah, it definitely is. I’m a big believer in the interdisciplinary, so I think sometimes we try and construct these little boxes to put everything in. So whether that’s science or technology or any policy law, but all these things are really, really intersected and really integrated. For example, in my efforts to reduce the water crisis, I have also had to look to things like educating people about this crisis in the first place.

Also promoting my own research, also working to see if I can get policy efforts put into place to have access to clean water in the first place. And I think that they are, like you mentioned, a triangle where they are all intersected and we really need to focus in on building that intersection instead of breaking it down. Is anybody at Columbia supportive of your interest in more interdisciplinary studies? Yeah, so Columbia is known for our core curriculum and part of what we’re doing at the core is we’re really pushed to focus in on lots of different aspects of the humanities as well as science. For example, I’m in the engineering school, but last semester I took a class on music humanities.

And actually every engineer is required to take either art humanities or music humanities, like we cannot graduate without that. We’re also required to take up so many other aspects of the core curriculum, whether that’s things like literature studies, other deep dives into music, whatever it requires. And that’s, I think, one of the most unique things about Columbia and how it actually works out. I’m curious, have you started thinking about an advanced degree and I’m afraid you might have to make a frustrating choice about pathway, but are you leaning towards an advanced engineering degree or a public policy degree or a computer science degree? Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’m still kind of deciding what path forward is the best for that kind of avenue.

I think that I would really like to be able to get a master’s or PhD that focuses in on this intersection of STEM and policy. And I think particularly higher level education would be a lot more receptive to it as well. Priscilla, thank you for teaching. I know this is the beginning of your 16th year at Grandbury, which is just outside of Fort Worth. Where did your interest in science education come from and did you have any opportunities in high school to do any science deep dives yourself? Well, my first science fair experience was in fifth grade, just my school science fair.

And I’m the first American born person in my family. My parents didn’t know how to help me, so when I come home and I say I need to do a science fair project, my parents who understood nothing about it, they’re like, well, we don’t know what to do. So I went to my teacher and I said, you know, we don’t have anything to do this at home. And so she took the time. It was very simple. I just did a sand clock, which wasn’t even correct because I had no concept of what it was exactly, but my teacher was able to provide the materials for me. And that was very powerful to me because it taught me that, you know, just because my parents couldn’t help me, I had my teacher there to support me. I didn’t win any prizes, but that kind of sparked an interest in science with me. And then I went on to sixth grade and I had an amazing science teacher that just, you know, exposed me to all kinds of things.

And it just kind of grew through the years. Unfortunately, I grew up in a little town in south Texas named Rio Grande City. We didn’t have all these robust science programs. And so, but I knew I love science. And so I decided to go to college at the University of Texas in San Antonio. And there I was able to experience what research was and I was able to participate in all kinds of robust programs that the university offered. But I realized, you know what, I’m at a disadvantage because I don’t know how to do really much of anything. But I did learn. And so that’s where I started thinking, maybe, you know, I might, I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. And then I started thinking, wait a minute, I love, I need to take this and I need to give other students the kind of experiences that I didn’t get.

And so that’s where it started. It was a long path. But I didn’t really zero on into science for as I until I started teaching at La Jolla, which is down south as well. And Lorenzo de Zavala Middle School. And we started, we weren’t winning anything. I was just doing it because I was told by my principal to do it. And once we were able by somehow a miracle, we had one kid that qualified to state and then we ended up getting disqualified because of my fault because I wasn’t informed. And I felt so bad. I said, you know what, I can’t do this. I can’t, I need to be informed. That kind of started me on this path of becoming more informed about how do I support students? What are the rules? You know, I started looking at programs, some of the best programs in the nation.

First, I started in Texas. And then when I try to get help from them and they did not want to share, you know, their ideas and their techniques of doing everything, I went wider. And through that, you know, path of self discovery, I came upon the Society for Science, which ended up, you know, opening up that web to all kinds of teachers that were willing to take me under their wing and help me and help my students. And I ended up moving up here to North Texas. And they were trying to close down the science research program in my current district. And I said, no, you know, I’m here and I want to, I want to get it, I want to bring it back. And so I’ve been in the process for about three to four years now of bringing it back. And this year we’re going to expand it into the middle school. So that’s been a little, in a little nutshell, how I ended up in this.

What do you think young people get out of science fairs and more broadly, you know, self directed research projects sort of stem deep dives? Priscilla, what do you think young people get out of that? First of all, they get self confidence. I traditionally have been working with students that you don’t usually see in these kind of competitions. And when I approach them and say, Hey, you know, you want to do a science research project, and they kind of look at me like me, you know, you want me. And so at first they’re kind of apprehensive because they don’t exactly know what they’re doing. But once they find that topic, you know, whether it be, you know, elephant poaching, or clean water and they get that little spark, they are unstoppable. And so first of all, self confidence and you open a kid’s opportunities to things that they never even realize that they have access to. And I mean, many of my kids, they really haven’t, you know, won like, you know, the science talent search, or they haven’t gone really to ISEF, and they don’t win major prizes. But the fact that these kids who are many of them are labeled as at risk students, students, and not only graduating from high school, but also going to college and pursuing a STEM degree. It’s already a major win for them.

I want to ask our recent Science Fair participants that same question. Anika, what did you get out of it? And what do you think other young people get out of the supported opportunity to do a real science deep dive? I think, first of all, I think the first thing you get out of is like community because once you enter this area of like research, it’s that you get exposed to this entire like new world of kids of like, we’re all just as passionate about, you know, exploring this like science or exploring these like, you know, you know, this little like cool little, you know, science thing and it’s like, it’s like, almost like you’re not alone anymore and you’re sort of learning along with all these other kids and you’re all learning together and I think kind of adding on as well. It’s like you definitely get a lot of self confidence out of it. And you also learn just like, you know, basic things of like, you know, how do you present to someone? How do you kind of explain your idea to someone? How do you kind of talk to kind of scientists and experts in the field and have like, you know, talking to kind of, you know, professionals and like, you know, explaining your idea to them. So I think definitely it gives you a lot of like self confidence presentation skills. And I think the most important is just like a community as like, you know, a kid exploring science. Well, let’s see what would you add to that? What did you get out of it? What do you see other young people benefit?

Yeah, I completely back up everything else that’s already been said, especially about community. I think that’s one of the biggest things that I got from science fair, especially coming from a non traditional research program. I always share this story. So one of the girls I was an SDS finalist in 2021. One of the girls there, her and I were actually both winners at the junior science and humanity symposium a couple years earlier. We never met. We’re in the same photo, we’re standing right next to each other during awards, never meet until SDS. And then both of us have that photo on our social media and we’re like, are we both in this photo? And it’s just that kind of like little community overlaps that you’ll constantly see, you know, at school, I run into SDS finals and I said finals and already there’s this sense of community and of camaraderie that you’re just able to gain from these people. Another really important thing I think is just the ability to present your ideas, whether or not you continue on with the specific project that you work in for science fair, being able to like, you know, think of ideas and questions at the spot, being able to reply to these judges kind of like probing intrusive questions.

It’s hard. And it’s kind of a skill that if the younger you develop it, the better off you’re going to be as you move forward in your collegiate career and your professional career as well. And Lalitya, I’m also a fan of you alluded to this, but I’m a fan of the fact that science fairs might be the only time in high school where you’re invited to select a problem. But really, it’s an opportunity and problem finding or what the Keen Network would call opportunity, opportunity definition, right, finding and framing a problem with which is really core to the entrepreneurial mindset. I would love to have you think back to how you picked the water quality project that you did what what spoke to you what made that important to you and your community enough to warrant a deep dive. Yeah, so I think first thing is we have problems everywhere, right. And it’s just a matter of literally listing out those problems, no matter how big or small they might be and then developing solutions to them.

You know, there’s so many companies, for example, that may or may care care products or beauty products and those solutions might not be the biggest things in the world. But you know, they might be Oh, this if you use this hair care products, it’ll make your hair less frizzy, things like that. So there are problems all around us all the time. For me, I focused in on the water crisis also on a family trip to India. And they’re like people don’t have access to clean water, it’s really common to boil water before drinking it before bathing in it like it’s just a part of life that people accept. My family and I we would boil our water before drinking it all that kind of stuff, but my younger sister and I actually both felt ill from drinking contaminated water. And when I returned back home, I found that this isn’t an issue just centered around the small community where I come from in India. It’s an issue that’s global, and it affects billions of people across the world.

As I started thinking how could I use the skills that I have to kind of solve this problem. I had had some previous experience in coding and machine learning, so I wanted to see if I could apply that to the water crisis. And of course, imaging is one of the easiest ways to start thinking about AI. So from there, it just was, you know, one step after another that just led me down this cascade to my final solution. Priscilla, is it challenging for young people to find and pick and frame a problem? Is that pretty common? And is this an important emerging skill set? It is very difficult for students to think in that way because if you look at traditional educational settings, what especially, you know, in science, which just absolutely blows my mind and it’s like they’re doing worksheet, they’re doing multiple choice questions. And I asked students to say, you know, how many times in real life are you like, okay, can I A, you know, or can I B, you know, never.

And you give a small problem with the right answer, right? Once you’re in school, you will, in science, you will never see one of those again. Never, I said. So, you know, with having the research experience that I had in my undergraduate degree, I, you know, and then I became a teacher, I said, wait a minute, how are we going to encourage a student to go into STEM if we’re not even doing real STEM and that just makes no sense to me. And so a lot of times the way, you know, I usually sit down with students and I say, okay, tell me a little bit about yourself. You know, what are you passionate about? And believe it or not, I’ve even recruited athletes and they’ve done projects that are based on that sport that they’re very interested in. And it’s just about it’s hard at first, but kind of just talking to the student and just get tapping into what passions they have, what things are important to them. And if you zone in on those things, then those ideas just start flowing and then you’ll have the issue of, okay, well then what idea are we going to pursue? Anika, I love how for both of you, this has led to difference making for you to really try to continue to extend your impact and you both have started impact organizations. Anika, what is Mozart?

Yeah, so Mozart was a nonprofit organization. I’d founded in actually right after the summer of ninth grade when I had attended Stanford AI for all because that was really when you know I was first exposed to artificial intelligence, what is it and I think initially I like my enthusiasm for it was kind of in naive faith of like you know, you know, oh my God it has so many possibilities for social good. And when I started kind of learning more and more about it, I started realizing that you know it could have negative implications on the very people it was designed to help. And it’s because you know the natural human biases that are you know, are in our society are kind of being baked into the data. And because artificial intelligence is such a technology that it revolves heavily around data, it has the I guess kind of possibility of reinforcing you know some of the worst aspects of our society and that’s really what made me realize how important and critical it is that you know women, people of color and really kind of all people are represented at the forefront of technology. And I think one of the first things I was thinking about is that you know, how can we kind of have this kind of new kind of almost intimidating technology, how can we help and you know, help it reach other people. And for me, I was a harpist and so I’ve always felt you know our music it’s a very universal technology no matter what language you speak, you can kind of connect through music. And so that was kind of what got me thinking of no matter what age you’re at, no matter you know where you come from, you can kind of connect through music and kind of learn about these kind of upcoming technologies through music and that’s really kind of how I founded Blizzard and

I was kind of nervous and I’ve been kind of running workshops and I remember my first workshop was like you know with elementary school kids and I was like you know they’re all running all over the place and now I was actually running a workshop with like college students and so it’s like it’s been an amazing journey and I think it’s also helped me realize just you know it’s been affecting one student who comes to a workshop, they’re kind of going on and you know you know reaching out to like maybe five other students. And so even if you start out small, you’re kind of creating a community and no matter how small the change you’re creating, it can have an impact. That’s beautiful. Art, Anika are you bringing your harp to MIT? I’m not sure it will fit in the dorm but I believe they do have an orchestra so yeah.

You’ve been driving a station wagon for a few years if you play the harp right? Oh yeah, I’m actually only like five feet tall so when I first started playing it was like the same height as me and then now it’s like two feet taller than me so all the concerts is like a lugging it around and you know you have those boxes that you have to carry, you carry it on the same thing. Yeah my sister played the harp so I was the harp transport dude and she was stuck driving a station wagon for most of her life. Lalitha, earlier you mentioned your project, is it NERD? Yeah so the NERD project was inspired by my research and it’s a sentient organization that aims to raise awareness about the water prices through research, outreach and public policy efforts.

So I’m working on implementing my NERD research which is this microbial contamination detection system. I’m also working on outreach efforts so I’ve worked with hundreds of students both online and in person to get them aware about STEM and aware about the water crisis and to really help them get engaged in science. Like Priscilla mentioned sometimes in school the way that science is taught to kids is not very engaging and it’s sort of like oh it’s reading from a textbook constantly but science is so much more engaging, so much more hands on and fun than just that which is part of what our organization tries to do. And lastly we’re also working on public policy efforts to help ensure that access to clean water is something that happens at the legislative level as well which I’ve mentioned a couple times through my intersection of STEM and policy. Another thing that I’m really excited about is I’m actually on the board of engineers that borders at Columbia and we have a water project that we’re working on in Morocco so we’re hoping to integrate NERD into our systems there as well.

Priscilla, wow. Right? I almost don’t have to ask this question but why should more young people have the kind of experiences that Anika and Lalitya have had in high school? Everybody should have these experiences, right? Absolutely and really it just opens up all the opportunities available to them. I know me being in Texas, you know, football is king and it’s all about I need to get a sports scholarship and my way of thinking is why are we not opening these STEM opportunities to students so that, you know, what’s the likelihood of somebody getting a football scholarship and going to the NFL, you know, very, very small. And I always tell my kids, okay, it’s fine that you have that dream but you know what, I’m going to give you a really strong plan B that eventually is going to be your plan A. And so it’s very important that we give these opportunities to students as early as possible so that they can start seeing themselves in a STEM career. And that’s exactly what this kind of experience does for them. It just, it helps them see, hey, you know, I could actually do this one day. And just to kind of, you know, talk about, it’s very important that as science teachers and STEM teachers, we are showing our students the most current, the most current technology that we have available.

And both of these young ladies have mentioned artificial intelligence. And this year it is my goal to do some type of artificial intelligence lessons in my biology classroom because it’s important that kids know about these things. That’s awesome. Thank you for doing that. And Anika, the MIT Media Lab has been a leader in this space. They created AI plus ethics curriculum and they’re encouraging middle schools to enter. They’re encouraging middle schools to introduce AI machine learning and ethics and invite middle school students into that dialogue. So we love that idea of starting in middle school. I just love the fact that both of you have gone deep in biology, technology and policy and crafted real-world solutions to real-world problems and that you continue to try to advance impact in the world. So great to hear. Thank you for being with us. Priscilla, where can people learn more about the Regeneron science talent search and the local fairs?

So they can go to the Society for Science website and there they can find all the information on that. Also for teachers, the Society for Science also has many outreach programs such as the Advocate Program, where I got a lot of my start with this. So they can find information about that as well. That’s awesome. And Lalithya, if they don’t have a science fair, what do you do? You start one, right? That’s so awesome that you didn’t have a science fair so you said, let’s do this. Let’s start one. Start where you are and do what you can. Exactly.

Hey, thanks so much for all three of you for being with us. What cool experiences you’ve had. You’re really terrific advocates for science and for young women. Priscilla, thanks for teaching. We really appreciate your teacher leadership. Thank you for having me. And thanks to our producer, Mason Pasha and the whole Getting Smart team for making this possible. Until next week, keep learning, keep leading and keep innovating for equity.