Anna Du ’24, Yifan Kang ’24, and Arielsie Li ’24 were named as semifinalists and among the top 300 scholars in the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2024 (STS) in a press release by the Society for Science on January 10. One of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competitions, Regeneron STS recognizes high school seniors for outstanding research in a scientific or mathematical field.
This year’s Top 300 scholars were selected from 2,162 applicants, the highest number of entrants since 1969. Each selected scholar is awarded 2,000 dollars and their schools are also awarded 2,000 dollar per scholar. In the next round of the competition, 40 of the top 300 projects will be selected as Regeneron Science Talent Search finalists and present their projects in Washington D.C. competing for over 1.8 million dollars in awards.
Each of the selected scholars from Andover chose to pursue a project in a different field of science and math. Du chose to focus her research on abiogenesis — the origin of life from inorganic matter. Using molecular dynamics simulations, she examined evidence for abiogenesis, the formation of bioinformational molecules such as DNA and RNA in Earth’s early, nonliving environment.
“I was looking at environmental conditions where [abiogenesis] happened… I said that the most likely environment would be in warm little ponds, which are basically intertidal pools because they’re isolated from the rest of the ocean, so [they’re] able to form a hyper-saturated solution of RNA. Once it’s able to form that hyper-saturated solution, as proven by the Miller-Urey experiment, I showed that with the help of carbonaceous nanostructures, they are able to form a template which the nuclear bases and the sugar-phosphate backbone would be able to attach to and elongate to actually form the RNA,” said Du.
Inspired by his previous experience in competitive programming, Kang began his research project at the Research Science Institute (RSI), a five week summer research internship held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In computer science, certain problems and algorithms are categorized as more difficult to solve than others. Kang’s research proved that optimizing the size of a quantum circuit called the Controlled NOT (CNOT) circuit was a difficult task.
“In computer science, people study how easy or hard it is to solve a certain problem. While some problems are known to have efficient algorithms, other problems are provably difficult to solve efficiently. Those are called NP-hardness results. In my paper, we just focus on this specific type of a quantum circuit called the CNOT circuit. I proved that optimizing the size of such a circuit is a difficult task, which means that it’s NP-hard,” said Kang.
According to Kang, the largely theoretical nature of his research presented many frustrations. He shared his appreciation for his mentor’s guidance at RSI and emphasized the importance of trusting your instincts in theoretical research.
“For theoretical research, the challenge is that it’s really a non-linear process… Theoretical [research] is, I would say, a sudden jump from zero to one. If you have nothing, you just have nothing. This was really frustrating when I was doing the research. Sometimes I [sat] there for days, and I just had nothing,” said Kang.
He continued, “During RSI, I met with my mentor every day to talk about my progress, what I did in the past day after our [last] meeting… You got to have a general sense of [whether] you’re going in the right direction. If you believe that the approach that you have is right, do not give up on that, continue trying and then, eventually, things will work out.”
For her project, Li designed and built a lizard-inspired bipedal robot. Drawing from the ways that bipedal lizards maintain their balance in nature, Li’s design addressed issues centering around stability and cost in robotics.
“The difficulty of stability and cost with bipedalism is pretty obvious because you only have two legs. It’s harder for a robot, or a human really, to stand still. If you don’t have any support on the legs, the robot will fall over, but if you do add a lot of motors and mechanisms for support, it will cost a lot of money. By using this lizard structure it can allow the robot to swing his head and tail back and forth dynamically. It will be more efficient and cost less because we use [fewer] motors with this new structure,” said Li.
Li expressed her excitement and gratitude towards the Society for Science, the organization which hosts the Regeneron STS and is dedicated to the promotion of science through educational programs and competitions. She encouraged students to participate in similar programs and conduct their own research projects in the future.
“I’m pretty happy because I just spent a long time on this project. I am really pleased to find out I get 2,000 dollars to spend on my next project… I hope [readers] can also get to know this competition as well as Regeneron ISEF. These are some really good opportunities for high schoolers, especially other students at [Andover]. I just hope more kids can find out about these events and do more of their own scientific research. It’s really fun and fulfilling,” said Li.
