17-year-old high school girl wins $100,000 for inventing cancer-killing nanoparticle system
Angela Chang, a 17-year-old high school student at Monta Vista High School, won the Siemens Math, Science and Technology Competition (a competition designed to identify and recognize outstanding talent early on and promote the individual development of high school students who pursue scientific research), earning a $100,000 college scholarship.
Siemens Foundation - 2011 Winners
17-year-old Cupertino student wins Siemens Competition and $100,000 - San Jose Mercury News
She is a 17-year-old high school girl named Angela Chang.
Angela Chan celebrates receiving the award
The research involves the design of an image-guided system for photothermally controlled drug release of multifunctional nanosystems for the treatment of cancer stem cells .
If you're wondering what photothermal is, 'Creation and Application Development of Nanoparticles' provides a fairly detailed explanation.
'Angela has created nanoparticles that resemble the Swiss Army knife of cancer treatment,' said Dr. Tejal Desai, professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the awards' judges. 'She has shown great creativity and ingenuity in designing nanoparticle systems that can be triggered to release drugs at tumor sites while enabling non-invasive diagnostic imaging. Her work is an important step forward in developing new approaches to therapeutic targeting of tumors with nanotechnology.' In fact, her gold- and iron-oxide-based nanoparticle system allows for the eradication of cancer stem cells, and multifunctional nanoparticles can combine both therapy and diagnostic imaging into a single platform.
To put it simply, it's like 'a ninja with a cell phone sent to assassinate cancer stem cells, who reports back to us as they carry out their mission.'
'Angela's commitment to her research was truly impressive,' said Dr. Tejal Desai. 'She has a deep understanding of the many methods explored in her project, from designing nanoparticles to demonstrating their efficacy in vivo.' There's no doubt this is excellent research.
In fact, Angela has won the top prize at the Intel International Student Science Fair ( Intel ISEF ) twice, in 2011 and 2010 (when she was 16 and 17 years old).
Her hobbies are golf and piano, she enjoys kayaking to relax, and her favorite book is F. Scott Fitzgerald 's 'This Side of Paradise.' She hopes to major in chemistry, biomedical engineering, or physics, and hopes to become a professor through research.
Furthermore, upon further research, I found out that her alma mater, Monta Vista High School, is located in Cupertino, California, and is one of the top high schools in the state.
English Vitamin Blog: How to Succeed in High School in the United States
Her graduating high school, Monta Vista, is one of the top high schools in California.
Monta Vista High School http://www.mvhs.fuhsd.org/
As you can see from the school's website, Monta Vista High School received 924 points in the 2008 API (Academic Performance Index, an index that indicates a student's academic ability). The maximum score is 1,000 points.
The Cupertino school district is famous for its excellent schools. Lynbrook High School and Monta Vista High School are particularly outstanding, attracting students from all over the world. If you would like to find out more about Cupertino's high school, elementary, and middle school districts, please refer to this link.
Cupertino itself is also famous as the location of Apple's headquarters, and it can be said to be the heart of Silicon Valley, where many talented people and companies tend to gather.
In a phone interview, she said, 'This is a real Cinderella moment for a science geek like me.'
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