Recently, students from the Collin County area were selected among the top 300 scholars for the Regeneron Science Talent Search.
Two Plano students — Shriya Bhat from Plano East Senior High School and Brian Zhou from Plano West Senior High School — in addition to Allen High School's Veda Kutagula were all announced as scholars for the nationwide contest.
The Regeneron Science Talent Search is an annual science and math competition, which was started by nonprofit Society for Science, that is geared towards high school seniors.
Each year, participating students send in their own original research work about various scientific areas of study.
Bhat's research work was titled Cloning and Mutagenesis of the ampC Gene Encoding for β–lactamase in Pseudomonas aeruginosa To Identify Potential Allosteric Binding Sites, Zhou's was called The Use of Social Media To Increase Vaccine Uptake: An Analysis of the Impact of the CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccine Communication on Twitter, while Kutagula's work was about Predicting Binge Drinking Risk Among Teenagers as Part of an Overall Mental Health Predictive Model Using Machine Learning Techniques.
The top 300 scholars were selected based on research abilities, leadership skills, community participation, academic commitment, creativity, as well as displaying potential as budding STEM leaders.
The scholars this year were chosen from 1,949 applications that were sent from over 600 high schools located throughout 48 American states, Puerto Rico, as well as four additional countries.
“Congratulations to the top 300 scholars in this year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search,” said Maya Ajmera, President and CEO of the Society for Science and Publisher Science News. “The enthusiasm and quality of projects from this year’s participants were just outstanding. Each year, I am tremendously impressed by the ingenuity that the students bring to the competition. Their hard work, creativity and perseverance should be applauded.”
For being named among the top scholars, the schools of the three respective Collin County students will all receive a $2,000 award.
To see the full list of scholars that were selected, click here.
