Brilliant young minds honored in prestigious science competition
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The next generation of scientists is already asking big questions and providing solutions.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Yeah, high schoolers Matteo Paz and Ava Cummings were honored at this year's Regeneron Science Talent Search. That's America's oldest science and math competition. Paz took first place with his research on detecting objects in the night sky.
MATTEO PAZ: I have a catalogue of 2 million objects. Around 1.5 million of them are new candidate discoveries.
MARTIN: Paz designed algorithms to sort through 10 years' worth of data. His results helped catalog and identify black holes, supernovas and star systems. And his work is already being used.
PAZ: There genuinely are a lot of use cases for what I found here, and that's really why I'm excited about this. For example, a prototype of this catalog is already in use by a separate research group at Caltech trying to analyze these things called M-dwarfs, which can actually help us understand which exoplanets can actually be habitable for humans like us.
MARTÍNEZ: Second-place winner Ava Cummings used fruit flies to create a model for STAC3 disorder. That's a muscle disease that currently has no cure first found in members of the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina.
AVA CUMMINGS: It has a lot of connections to my cultural background. And so I was just very interested in doing some more research into this disease and also introducing some novel treatments that might help improve the quality of life for individuals within my tribe that have experienced this.
MARTIN: Cummings found that the combination of the experimental drug tirasemtiv and an herbal treatment made from nettles produced the best results.
CUMMINGS: It led me to value how the bridge between modern medicine and then traditional Indigenous medicinal practices can be very applicable in the scientific community and in medicine.
MARTÍNEZ: Both students intend to pursue their passions in college, paving the way for the future of scientific discovery. And it sounds like they both are well on their way.
(SOUNDBITE OF GABOR SZABO'S "STORMY")
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