Three Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts students earned recognition at the 2023 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.
The team of Amanda Navarro and Charis Xiong won a Third Grand Award in the Plant Sciences category for their project “Development of a Novel AI Soybean Root-Knot Nematode Stress Assessment Model in Soybean Plants (Both Field and Home-Grown).”
Shreyam Tripathi won a Fourth grand Award in the Translational Medical Science category for his project “Investigating the Role of Rev1 in Maintaining Accurate DNA Replication Past G4 Containing Regions in the Leading and Lagging Strands.”
All three are members of ASMSA’s Class of 2023.
ISEF is the world’s largest pre-college STEM Competition that features more than 1,800 high school students from around the world. The competition was held May 14-19 in Dallas, Texas. Tripathi qualified for the competition at the West Central Regional Science Fair held at ASMSA in February while Navarro and Xiong earned their trip to ISEF at the Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair held March 31-April 1.
Navarro and Xiong’s project focused on developing a computer software program that can help soybean farmers determine whether their crops have been infected by Southern Root-Knot Nematodes, microscopic roundworms that act as parasites and cause devastating damage to crops worldwide.
They grew soybean plants in potting pots — some infected with the nematodes and others without. They photographed the plants throughout their growth. Data was also collected from plants grown in a field for comparison. The photos were placed into a student-built network to see if a computer could recognize and classify soybean plants infected with the nematodes from the ones without the disease.
Both Navarro and Xiong said they weren’t confident they would receive any recognition at the contest. During the judging day, they were visited by four judges in 15 minute increments. While other competitors received additional visits from other judges, they did not.
“I felt the 15 minutes weren’t enough at times and that we couldn’t express the depth and entirety of the project,” Xiong said. “At the time, I didn’t think we did entirely too well because a lot of judges came by for special awards or to listen to a project again at other projects, and none of them came by our booth. So we concluded that our project didn’t rank high enough to be considered for either special or general ranking awards.”
Navarro said that feeling carried over to the overall awards ceremony two days later. Their name being announced for a Third Award was unexpected.
“My initial reaction when I heard my name called for a third place in the plant science category was shock,” Navarro said. “(We) had zero expectations of winning anything because we felt as though our judging rounds didn’t go so well. After they announced fourth-place winners, I had actually tried toning it all out.
“When they called our names, we literally jumped out of our seats and ran up on the stage in pure excitement. It felt really good to know that we had really placed and that I should never doubted our research in the first place.”
Xiong said she was equally surprised. “I was in shock because I wasn’t expecting our project to win against so many other interesting, great plant science projects. Afterwards, Amanda and I were insanely excited and proud that our project had made it so far and that we could represent ASMSA up on stage,” she said.
Both of them said it was nerve-wracking and exciting to be up on the stage in front of everyone. Xiong said they took a selfie while up there because it “was a once-in-a-lifetime experience” while Navarro said, ‘When I got up there, I couldn’t stop shaking from excitement and pure shock.”
Both of them thanked Nicholas Seward, who served as their primary adviser, and Dr. Allyn Dodd, who guided them in the soybean growing process.
Tripathi’s project focused on the replication of the G-quadraplex (G4), a secondary structure that genomic DNA adopts and plays a vital part in cellular regulation. He focused on the importance of Rev1 in G4 DNA replication as well as the importance of the placement of the G4 motif within a certain gene.
Similar to Navarro and Xiong, Tripathi said he was not confident at all after the initial judging phase. The first judge he interacted repeatedly interrupted him with questions that seemed very loosely related to the project. That was the first of 10 judges overall including Grand Awards and Special Awards who Tripathi interacted with that day.
“I was genuinely not expecting to win anything at all,” Tripathi said. “The experience I had with the first judge really shattered my hopes of receiving any award because when I spoke to my other ASMSA finalists they said that their judging went very well and that they had some hopes of winning something.”
He said considering that ISEF is an international competition with many young, bright scientists from across the globe winning any award is incredibly difficult. During the Grand Awards ceremony, Tripathi said he tried to distract himself.
“I actually opened up my phone and started playing Subway Surfers as a coping mechanism. When the announcer said ‘From Hot Springs, Arkansas,’ everyone from ASMSA immediately started looking at me, and my head immediately turned to look up at the big screen. When my name was announced, I was in complete shock because I was not expecting it at all. It felt like I was dreaming,” he said.
“I was actually shaking on stage, and I couldn’t stay still. When I took my phone out to take a picture, my hands were shaking. Being in front of all those people and all the production cameras made me feel almost like a movie star. I felt so relieved that all of my hard work paid off and all that work actually resulted in me standing on that stage.”
Tripathi said receiving an award at ISEF was very rewarding and was the result of many hours of work that he put into conducting research and reading papers to better understand the concepts of his project. He also credited the assistance of ASMSA life science instructors Dr. Patrycja Krakowiak — his main project mentor — and Dr. Whitney Holden, who assisted as his capstone adviser.
“I know there were many times where I have frustrated them, causing them to send me countless emails in the middle of the night, but I trusted them throughout the process and did everything they asked me to. If it weren’t for them, none of this would’ve been possible,” he said.
“Dr. Krakowiak really guided me every step of the way. There have been a couple of times where I would be on a Zoom call with her at 11 p.m. talking about things to fix in my project. This award is just as much hers as it is mine, if not more. In all honesty, without all the help she gave me, I would not have been able to accomplish anything. I owe her so much.”