Bianco and Desai Chosen as Semi-finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012Ashley Bianco and Nikhil Desai, both seniors at OHS, have been chosen as semi-finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS), a prestigious national science competition that recognizes the extraordinary original research of high-school seniors. Of the over 1,800 applicants this year, only 300 students were recognized as semi-finalists. 40 finalists will be selected to present their work to a national audience in Washington DC in March 2012 to compete for the top prize of $100,000. Previous Intel STS finalists have gone on to conduct award-winning research, including work that has been awarded the Nobel Prize and MacArthur Foundation Fellowships.
Nikhil Desai has been working for the past year with the Stanford Institute of Medical Research (SIMR) on a project to optimize a FRET-based system for detecting neuronal activity, entitled “Improving dynamic range and membrane localization of a flourescent voltage censor”.
Ashley Bianco is being recognized for her work elucidating novel genes in floral determinacy in Arabidopsis thaliana at the Genome Lab at the University of California, Riverside for the past two years. You can read Ashley’s publication of her work in the OHS publication De Novo.
Congratulations Pixels!