Thoughts and Details From 2013 Science Fair Winner

Below are some excerpts from an email (posted with permission) I received from Wei Li, regarding specifics about her award winning science fair project.  As you will read, the details of her project are very impressive.

"...before I get to the heavy-duty technical stuff, I just wanted so say how proud I am to be able to represent East Greenwich High School in the competition and how helpful the teachers were. Mr. Rath especially, helped me get the forms ready and told me of all these competitions. Otherwise, I never would have known that there were such great opportunities out there!"

"My project was done at a Brown affiliated lab at RI Hospital over the summer and throughout the school year. I studied how neutrophils (an immune cell in the body) responded when fungi invade our body. When a fungal infection occurs, the neutrophils go to the site of infection by recognizing a pattern on the fungi that lets them know it is an invader. In this case, Beta-Glucan serves as the pattern and a certain receptor on the neutrophil – CR3 – recognizes it. I then modeled such a response in my experiments and found that neutrophils were “clustering” in the context of Beta-Glucan. I then went ahead to determine signaling molecules important in this response by inhibiting the molecules of interest and seeing if these inhibitors had an effect on the clustering. Lastly, I quantified the clustering data using a MATLAB script."

"From this science project, I got Best in Fair in Senior Division and finally was chosen as one of the top 2 at the 2013 RI Science and Engineering Fair (RISEF), which is affiliated with the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF). Hence, I am going to represent RI at Intel ISEF on May 12-17, 2013 in Phoenix, AZ!"

"Furthermore, I also submitted my research paper to the 2013 Southern New England Regional (RI & MA) Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) held at the University of New Hampshire. I was the only one chosen from RI to present my paper on the symposium and I got 3rd place, winning the opportunity to attend National JSHS on May 1-5, 2013 in Dayton, Ohio, along with $1000 scholarship from The US Army, Navy, and Air Force."

"Again, none of this would have happened if I did not receive help from the teachers at EGHS and I am so proud to be able to represent my school and RI to participate in National competitions."

Congratulations go to Wei and her family. We are very proud of you and your accomplishments!