South Side student is Intel finalist

Lori Ying, a South Side High School senior, was surprised last month to find out that she had been named a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search. But when she learned last week that she had been selected as one of 40 finalists in the prestigious research competition, she was shocked.

“I totally wasn’t expecting it,” Ying said. “I think you can pretty much ask any finalist and they’ll say the same thing.”

Ying will be in Washington, D.C., March 11-16 with her 39 remaining competitors, presenting her project, “Female Mating Patterns and Mate Quality in the Dengue Vector Mosquito, Aedes Aegypti.” She studied whether mosquitoes that are genetically altered not to carry diseases like malaria and dengue fever, known as transgenic mosquitoes, were viable mates for normal female mosquitoes. If the females were to mate with them, it would spread the genes and eventually eliminate the mosquitoes’ ability to be carriers of the viruses.

All of the finalists receive laptop computers and $5,000. The winner will receive $100,000. “I’m not really looking to beat anyone out there,” Ying said. “I just want to have the experience of going and competing with people who are really dedicated to their projects. And I really admire them for that, so it’ll be nice to meet people who are like me.”

This week she was working on her presentation, refining her explanation of her project for the contest’s judges. And she encouraged upcoming SSHS students who are interested in advanced science to take the science research class, taught by Herb Weiss.

“If you think about the thousands of projects that are put out there each year for Intel, to be in the top 40 is amazing,” said Weiss, who had never had a student make it to the finals before Ying. “There’s not much that separates the top 40 from the top 300. It’s all on the reader” — the Intel judge who reads the student’s description of his or her project. “And obviously she sparked something in her reader that made them say, ‘Wow, this kid is amazing.’”

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