HOUSTON -Jenny Yeh, a senior at St. Agnes Academy, was part of a two-student team which recently won a $20,000 scholarship award through the national Math, Science and Technology Competition conducted by the Siemens Foundation.
     The Siemens competition is administered by the College Board, and provides nearly $2 million in scholarships and awards annually. Only six individuals and six teams were part of the elite group that participated in the national finals in New York.
     To reach nationals, Yeh and her teammate, Mary Catherine Wen, a senior at Archbishop Molloy High School at Briarwood, New York, won the southwest regional team prize for their project, Proliferation and Alignment of Osteoblasts on Oriented Magnetic Nanocomposites. The team's research combines a magnetic fields component with materials science to help enhance growth of bone cells and accelerate fracture and wound healing.
     In an interview with the Siemens Foundation, regional competition judge Dr. Wolfgang Frey, assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin, spoke highly of the results from Yeh and Wen's collaboration.
     "Jenny and Mary Catherine's project has obvious medical applications and could lead to finding a better cure for bones that don't grow easily," he said. "We were impressed with the unique way the team used three distinct materials in their research, combining polymers, natural clays and nanoparticles."
     Before becoming academic partners, both students formed a fast friendship when they met at Long Island's Stony Brook University summer research program this past summer. "We had similar interests and we wanted to do something biology-related, so we just decided to do this project together," Yeh said in an interview with the Herald.
     Yeh says she and Wen got the idea for their project after a dialogue with one of the research camp undergraduate counselors. "When she was a young girl, she broke her arm. Her bones don't heal right, so every time the rest of her arm bone grows, she has to get another surgery to reset the fracture for healing," Yeh explained. "So we decided to find a way to actually improve the healing process of the bone fractures."
     Although the research work required plenty of trial and error, maximizing their schedule was the most essential component of the scientific process. "Because I was only there for the summer, we had to work harder than a lot of the other teams, because they could always go back to work (at a later time). We had to sleep in the labs and pull all-nighters and stuff like that, because we wanted to get things done before I left," Yeh said. "that is when we did the actual physical research where we handled our materials in the lab."
     She added, "And then afterwards, we had to write a paper to submit to Siemens, because they pick out semi-finalists from the papers. You don't have to make any presentations. It is a different set of judges and they pick out people to attend regionals."
     At the national competition, Yeh and wen made a 12-minute PowerPoint presentation for the general audience before the judges conducted a private Q&A session with the participants. "That is when you basically have to support yourself," Yeh explained. "There are professors from all around the country and they ask you questions about your understanding of (the research), the premise of your study and why you did this project. You have to back yourself up."
     Not surprisingly ,Yeh described that experience as "nerve-wracking" and quite intense. "But at least I was with a team member," she laughed. "There is another (competition) category for individuals and they have to do it all by themselves."
     Still, Yeh and Wen had done their homework and were certainly confident with their findings, with their success at the regional and national contests speaking for themselves.
     "It was too surreal because we didn't expect we were going to win at regionals and move on to nationals," Yeh said. "Just getting that far into regionals was too much for us. Getting to nationals was unbelievable,"
Throughout the entire Siemens competition, Yeh says she received great support from family, friends and the St. Agnes community. "I think St. Agnes really embraces diversity and how everyone has their own talents," she noted. "They make you strong in character and enable you to go out there into the world and actually do things and try to make a difference,"
     Yeh is a member of Math Club, NatIonal Honors Society, Model United Nations, Student Council and Eastern Pacific Youth Club. She plans to pursue studies in pre-med, possibly concentrating her major in nutrition. Ideally, she would like to implement world travel into her field of occupation.
     Thanks to experiences like the Siemens Competition in New York and her cross-country teamwork with Wen, Yeh appears on the right path. After St. Agnes, Yeh is considering attending Columbia, New York University or Rice.
     She says she has remained in close contact with Wen, her New York-based collaborator. They corresponded via phone and e-mail when they were completing their project. "Oh yeah, we stay in touch,"Yeh said. "She just got into Princeton, and she is very excited about that."