Schools
Sachem's Intel-igent Students Excel
Capture fourth place at national science and engineering competition.
Most people who have problems with mosquitoes just brush them away and wait for the seasons to change. Not Ruchi Shah and Garima Yadav. They're combating the annoying insects with their minds.
Though telekinesis would be nice, they're ideas are a little more ingenious. The two Sachem High School North sophomores created a globally marketable mosquito attractant as an alternative to current harmful repellants and insecticides.
This landed them as finalists in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in San Jose earlier this month. Joining 1,611 other high school students from 59 countries around the world, Shah and Yadav placed fourth and earned $500 each in prize money.
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They're not your typical high school girls to say the least.
"When I was growing up, mosquitoes would be attracted to me and I'd get bit a lot," said Shah. "We wanted to find the attractive components in someone's perspiration and see why certain individuals are more attractive than others."
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Using various concentrations of nitrogen based compounds – ammonia and urea – Shah and Yadav conducted experiments to see what was most striking.
Their project, titled "The Role of Perspiration Constituents in the Attraction of Culex pipiens to Humans" was perfected over months of research at school. Utilizing ninth period, lunch breaks, weekends and holidays, both students spent excessive amounts of time to reach that level of success on an international platform.
In the future, Yadav said they'd be testing to see if different combinations of attractants would have synergistic effects on each other.
"We can test human sweat samples to see the ratio and the compounds that are most attractive and use that for our ultimate goal to develop an attractant," she said.
They suggest putting the attractant in a candle or something compact to draw mosquitoes there, instead of having them swarm and swell on humans.
"With repellents, they are harmful to the skin and environment and mosquitoes develop a resistance to them over time," Yadav said.
They hope a final product would be marketable for reasonable prices to developing countries.
What keeps these girls interested in science at such a young age? The desire to help and the impact of shear curiosity to name a few examples.
In North principal John Dolan's office Wednesday morning, Shah and Yadav lit up with excitement when speaking about science and their recent involvement.
"I'd ask why?" said Shah, who also takes part in choir, the model United Nations club, varsity swimming and diving and many other academic activities. "Why does that happen? I'd ask my parents a lot of questions. I wanted to find out why things work a certain way and research is an outlet for that excitement."
"I love helping and love science," added Yadav, who is also very active with the United Nations club, volunteering and tutoring. "So this combines the two."
Both girls took part in Stony Brook University's Science and Research Awareness Series last summer, affording them an inside look at practical research methods.
To be exposed to the cultural experiences of other students and people in the academic world, Shah, Yadav and their science teacher/mentor Monica Marlowe were fortunate and honored.
"As sophomores, going there is such an honor and tremendous opportunity to see what else everyone is doing," Marlowe said.
Sitting at the ceremony when they were honored in San Jose, Shah said she got shivers thinking about the significance of the people around her.
"You know they are going to be the ones that change the world some day," she said. "To even be a part of that and sit there with those people is amazing."
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