Brilliant young minds honored in prestigious science competition

Two high school students have been recognized for their innovative research at this year's Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation's oldest science and math competition. The awards ceremony took place Tuesday night in Washington, D.C.

Matteo Paz, 18, of Pasadena took first place for his research on detecting objects in the night sky. Using algorithms he designed, Paz sorted through a decade's worth of astronomical data, 200 terabytes in total, leading to a catalog of 2 million celestial objects, 1.5 million of which are new candidate discoveries.

"There genuinely are a lot of use cases for what I found here, and that's really why I'm excited about this," Paz said. "For example, a prototype of this catalog is already in use by a separate research group at Caltech trying to analyze these things called M-dwarfs, which can help us understand which exoplanets, alien worlds orbiting other stars, can actually be habitable for humans like us."

Second-place winner Ava Cummings, 18, of Smithfield, N.C., created a model using fruit flies to study STAC-3 disorder, a rare muscle disease first identified in members of the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina.

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"It has a lot of connections to my cultural background, so I was very interested in doing more research into this disease and also introducing some novel treatments that might help improve the quality of life for individuals within my tribe," Cummings said.

Her research found that a combination of the experimental drug Tirasemtiv and an herbal treatment made from nettles produced the best results in her fruit fly subjects.

"It led me to value how the bridge between modern medicine and traditional Indigenous medicinal practices can be very applicable in the scientific community and in medicine," she said.

Both students intend to pursue their passions in college, paving the way for the future of scientific discovery.

Edited for radio by Reena Advani. Produced and edited for the web by Majd Al-Waheidi.
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