Western Students Win at Regional Science Fair

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Caitlin Dutta
Caitlin Dutta

Western Albemarle High School junior Caitlin Dutta earned a Best in Show Grand Award at the 33rd Annual Piedmont Regional Science Fair held at the University of Virginia’s John Paul Jones Arena March 12. She was joined by Albemarle High sophomore Selena Feng, who earned seven awards for her exhibit, “I Click: The Development of a Practical Vision Based Virtual Mouse,” an exhibit featuring technology that empowers a person to use his or her hand in place of a computer mouse to manipulate functions on a computer monitor screen.

Dutta’s exhibit, “The Effect of a New Long Non Coding RNA 2953 on Muscle Creation,” examined how to disable a genetic factor in muscle cells that inhibits healthy cell growth.

Dutta and Feng automatically qualified for the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair in Los Angeles, which is being held May 11-16 this year.

Albemarle public schools students won a total of 84 awards at the fair, including the first-place awards in 12 of 16 categories.

Other first-place winners from Western were Xiaoran Zhu in Materials & Bioengineering, for the development of a nasal spirometer to diagnose and monitor pulmonary disease, and Lillian Xu in Microbiology for her research to find a genetic cause among stem cells for atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

“The sophistication of the goals these students have set for themselves is beyond impressive,” said Carol Stutzman, who oversees Western Albemarle’s Science Fair exhibits. “All three of our first-place winners focused on projects that can save lives, dealing with long-time medical conditions that threaten public health. The discipline, focus and research that went into these exhibits offer a powerful statement about the ability of our next generation of leaders to enhance the quality of our lives,” Stutzman said.

In addition to the high school competition, three students from Henley Middle School won awards in their division: Meg Richey, Mehdin Hossain, and Gauri Prakash.