The winners of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology were announced recently, and for the first time in the history of the competition, girls took the top honors. You can read all about it in this New York Times article*.
The winner in the individual category, sixteen-year-old Isha Himani Jain, studied bone growth in zebra fish and has won a $100,000.00 scholarship for her work. In the team competition, Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, both seventeen, split a $100,000.00 scholarship for creating a molecule that helps block the reproduction of a drug-resistant bacteria. Check out these descriptions of the research conducted by all ten high school finalists. Impressive stuff!
I first read about this story in a recent issue of NSTA Express, an online newsletter of the National Science Teachers Association, in an article titled: “Apparently Girls Can Do Science”.
Well, duh.
*Note: FREE registration required to access the New York Times article.