
17-year-old wins 100k for creating cancer-killing nanoparticle - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/17-year-old-wins-100k-for-creating-cancer-killing-nanoparticle-2011128/
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polyfractal
This is very cool, but the article is also very light on details. I have some
experience with this competition and the field.

Intel ISEF is like the world championship of science fair projects. Its a
_very_ cool competition and a wonderful experience. I attended the 2003 ISEF
in Portland, Oregon for my project on distributed computing. Hands down the
best experience I had in high school.

 _However_ , there is a huge disparity between the projects in
medicine/biology and everything else. I completed my project entirely on my
own with no mentors. Many other CS and engineering projects were similar. The
projects in medicine and biology, however, were conducted at a local
university under the guidance of faculty and staff, simply because these
experiments are not something you can perform at home. They also raked in a
disproportionate amount of the awards.

Having switched to biology in college and now working in a lab post-
graduation, I've seen the type of work most undergrads and high-schoolers
perform. Even if they are intellectually committed, much of the work is
actually performed by others in the lab. Undergrads, and especially high-
schoolers, often serve as support roles rather than investigators. Obviously
this varies to some degree depending on the lab.

My point: Awesome that this student won, and awesome that this is helping to
guide her into biology. But, I doubt she did most of the work. Nanoparticle
treatment of cancer is not exactly a new idea, so she is likely working under
a post-doc who has been working on this for some time.

Looking back at my post, this comes across very curmudgeonly. Perhaps I'm just
disappointed that ISEF winners tend to be those helping out professional
projects rather than those who design and build the project entirely on their
own, or with minimal mentor help.

Edit: to clarify my point, assume a HS student gets out of school at 3pm and
work until 5pm, five days a week. That's a lot for a HS student.
Unfortunately, 10 hours a week isn't going to get anything done in biology. A
single western blot takes longer than 6 hours to run. Hell, I work 50+
hours/week and progress is still very slow.

~~~
gujk
These high school placements into university labs are a classic example of how
privilege plays out, converting socio economic status into plausible
credentials. Connected parents get glamorous internships for their kids that
massively overstated the kids' contributions to and translate into elite
college placements.

No one can say these kids aren't smart and deserving, but what about kids who
are also smart and deserving but not related to researchers or their friends?
I prefer math contests where any kid who can reach the library has a downtown
tty good opportunity.

~~~
maayank
"I prefer math contests where any kid who can reach the library has a downtown
tty good opportunity."

It's funny that you mentioned math, because I thought about it while reading
the rest of your message.

In my university I know many (over a dozen) people who had their math degree
(or most of it) done in high school/are in high school and are currently
pursuing it. Virtually all of them (all but one) have a parent who's
professionally into mathematics (most have parents who are PhDs or professors
of math, another parent has a PhD in electrical engineering, etc.).

~~~
gujk
You are absolutely going have some familial encouragement and support in any
field. I was one of few of my math peer group in high school and college who
didn't have Ph.D parents. (I had plenty of support, and but not direct
parental direction in math. They drove me to the library and to my math team
practice before school. I can't imagine how they could have given me nearly as
much support in chem lab... And I even did a college chem lab one summer in
high school, as part of a math summer program!)

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bluedevil2k
I read a disturbing stat in the WSJ on Saturday - it pointed out that 20% of
school's resources are geared towards learning disabled, developmentally
challenged students and "low achieving students", while _only 0.5% is devoted
to talented and gifted students_. The article blames this on the increasing
costs of adhering to all the national and state laws regarding disabled
children, while another argument could be made that schools are more concerned
about obtaining minimum scores on standardized tests to receive funding.

It may seem completely insensitive to argue against helping disabled students,
but it seems to be happening at the expense of the gifted students. When you
read articles like this one, you realize that the people who move society
forward in leaps and bounds, the ones who create great businesses, create new
products, discover new medicines are predominantly the talented and gifted
ones.

If we as a nation are making a decision to cut funding to these gifted
students, are we at the same time making a decision that jeopardizes the
advancement of our society as a whole.?

~~~
pragmatic
As a father of a child with special needs and also someone who participated in
the "gifted" program, I can add a few thoughts.

1\. The gifted program (at my school) was next to worthless. We skipped one
regular crap class (social studies) to go build paper airplanes to prepare for
this competition: <http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/>

2\. Early intervention (yes funded with tax payer dollars as part of a
program) helped my son with high functioning autism. Due to that intervention
he is now (besides from some personality quirks and the occasional melt down)
virtually indistinguishable from any other student. In fact his IQ puts him
very close to the gifted range.

Yes, this is a personal anecdote.

I would like to see the research on gifted programs. Are they worth the cost?

As a "gifted" student, I learned much more from the library (and now the
intranet) than any kind of gifted program.

~~~
andylei
i think there is an argument to be made that your gifted program sucked
because it had basically no resources, probably as a result of budgeting
decisions.

~~~
illumin8
There is also a very good argument to make that gifted students don't need any
special programs, because they are able to learn on their own at a pace that
no instructor or regular course could keep up with.

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ytNumbers
A better article on this story includes this quotation: _"Zhang says it could
take 25 years between clinical trials and other steps before her research is
helping patients."_ To prevent a jillion people from dying while awaiting
treatment, maybe someone could bankroll a $100K "Bring a Product to Market in
Less Than 25 Years" science competition.

[http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/05/calif-teen-
ta...](http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/05/calif-teen-
takes-100k-national-science-prize/)

~~~
polyfractal
And in 15 years we would have a similar post on the internet about how someone
should bankroll a competition that increases the safety of these drugs that
are flooding the market with heinous side effects.

Clinical trials take so long because there are so many regulations about
safety. You can argue that cancer patients are going to die anyway, so let
them decide to take whatever drugs they want. On the other hand, this opens
the most vulnerable people up to those that have the most to gain from
exploiting them.

There is a lot of red tape involved in getting a medical drug to market, but a
lot of it is there for good reason.

~~~
epistasis
>Clinical trials take so long because there are so many regulations about
safety.

Clinical trials take so long because it takes so long to perform the study.
Clinical trials _cost_ so much because of regulations, and because of sparing
no expense to make them happen more quickly.

~~~
polyfractal
Eh, I'm not sure that is a distinction you can really separate. The
regulations require five phases of progressively more difficult requirements,
full double-blind trials, etc. Do you really think companies are going to take
the time to do proper, five phase trials if it wasn't required?

~~~
zasz
Yeah there are a lot of phases, but each phase takes a while. (Though the
first couple phases, which are mostly about ensuring that the drug isn't
poisonous, don't take too long.) Clinical work has to move at the speed of
biology, which is very slow compared to computers. Skin cells, which have a
really short life cycle, divide every 15 days. For a disease like cancer, if
even a handful of cancerous cells hasn't been destroyed, you could experience
a relapse--but it would take a while, perhaps even years, for the cancer to
build back up to detectable levels. If your disease takes years to confirm
that it's gone, the clinical trial is going to take years to confirm that it
works. It really sucks, but that's just how biology works.

~~~
polyfractal
Exactly, which was my point to the original parent. =)

Biology is slow, so effective and scientifically accurate trials are slow.
These slow trials are required because of regulations for health and safety
reasons, which means time to market is slow for drugs.

Which means complaining about the 25 year time to market (the original
parent's comment) is really the same as complaining about regulations. Drop
the regulations and companies are no longer required to do scientifically
accurate/responsible studies, which means faster to-market times (and less
safe drugs).

~~~
zasz
Shoot, I think I responded to the wrong comment.

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mikedmiked
Here is what I believe to be an informative comment on reddit about the
subject:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/n4hnw/now_im_proud/c3...](http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/n4hnw/now_im_proud/c367wtq)

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DonnyV
100k....thats it? No TV spot on a morning show or Letterman? This is why kids
look up to sports stars and reality show stars, incentives are all wrong. Kim
Kardashian just got married and divorced within 60 days and made 18 million!
Yes I understand this form of career is not about fame and notoriety but kids
don't know that until there older. The only thing they know is Kim Kardashian
just made a boat a load of money for marketing her wedding and selling tv
spots and not for studying hard and curing a diseases.

They should of given her 1 million, so she doesn't ever have to think about
money. Frees her to try riskier projects and ideas.

~~~
simonbrown
$1M is not enough to never have to think about money.

~~~
igravious
Tell that to someone on $2 a day and see what they say. Tell that to kids who
have to literally wade through garbage looking for plastic to earn a living.
Tell that to those who are starving in Somalia. Doesn't a little alarm bell go
off in your head at all when you something like that is on the tip of your
tongue?

~~~
zasz
No, not really. A million dollars in the United States isn't enough if you
have multiple people depending on you, like children or elderly parents, or
siblings in trouble, or if you yourself develop a debilitating disease, or get
into a car accident. I'm sure it's more than enough for someone in Somalia,
but I don't think the OP lives in Somalia.

~~~
igravious
Want to add any more conditions? The original poster said, "$1M is not enough
to never have to think about money." and I think that statement given the
levels of poverty, inequality and injustice on this globe is frankly
disgusting. Vote me down all you want, it's a cliche that the truth is a
bitter pill but there you go. In the normal course of events one million
dollars would be riches beyond their wildest dreams for most people on this
planet and would let anybody in normal circumstances live out the rest of
their days very very comfortably. Unless, they are greedy. In which case,
nothing would be enough.

~~~
zasz
My family used to be pretty poor. By "poor," I mean, "not enough to eat." So
yes, I know a bit about injustice, and I'm still going to stand by my
statement that a million dollars, in the United States, is not enough to never
have to think about money again. I can't throw away the conditions of not
wanting to help out my elderly parents, or wanting to afford the best
treatment for myself if I get cancer, by the way, without turning into one of
those greedy heartless bastards you dislike so much.

How about this. Do you think a single mother working at minimum wage in
Detroit is well-off? She's making what, $50 per day, which is 25 times as much
as your hypothetical Somali, but I think someone as concerned about social
justice as you are ought to realize that with her "exorbitant" wage comes a
shitty standard of living. Using currency as a metric of well-being is not
enough.

~~~
igravious
I think we're talking at cross purposes here my friend. This single Mum in
Detroit, say she is making $50 a day, ok? But then I give her a million bucks.
She can buy a cheap house, invest the bulk of it and practically live off the
interest even after insurance and bills so long as she didn't decide that all
of a sudden she wanted nice cars, nice holidays, nice clothes, whatever. I'm
not arguing that there are poor all over the world. I'm arguing that a million
dollars is enough to set anyone up for life anywhere in the world. If you are
telling me with a straight face that _in normal circumstances_ in the States
that you don't think a windfall like this is not enough then I am startled.

That said, how the hell much is health insurance in the States. Maybe it
really is a lot more than I realize. I guess I'm used to universal health care
but all the same - get the million, buy a small house outright, keep your
expenses down, and invest the rest (like 800,000) and live off the interest.
That's got to be doable :)

~~~
zasz
If you're not from the States, then you have no right to say how much is
enough, or is not enough. I've done the math. If I want to be able to take
care of my parents, any children I ever have, and myself, then a million
dollars is not enough. If your hypothetical single mother has a child with
cancer, or gives birth to a child with a disability, she's utterly fucked in
the United States.

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carldall
News like these are fantastic. I often wonder how much time and resources
mankind looses because there're so many young people in third world countries
who are very smart and can ask the right questions, but who will never be able
to gain the necessary education to be able to commit their fantastic
innovations to society. Imagine how much further ahead, as a whole, we could
be if the education and standard of living of the first world would be the
same all over the world.

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lightcatcher
Its odd, but I feel like I've seen this project (some sort of cancer killing
thing) win at each of the significant science fairs over the last couple of
years. From my experience, most of the kids at these high level science fairs
just make reports over stuff they've worked on (not designed) in a lab.

My sister is currently working on a pretty good science fair project involving
paint that can generate solar power. The cycle for this was to come up with an
idea, email universities/labs in the area, find a mentor who agrees to work
with them, and then just listen to and do what the mentor advises. Its still a
great project and she is learning a ton from it, but not really something she
designed and I wouldn't be happy to compete against it with something I came
up with and made in my garage.

Overall, I wish there was some sort of limit to how much the mentors are able
to be involved. I had a ton of fun (and learned a lot) doing $150 max budget,
internet research only projects mostly on my own (sometimes had help from my
dad building apparatus), but its pretty impossible to compete with people
working out of labs with professional help.

Also, I just realized that some guy I met a few months ago when school started
(and who I have classes with) won the Siemens competition last year.

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rickdale
Just 100k? Seems like a small sum for something that could potentially help
cure cancer.

~~~
luriel
> could potentially help cure cancer.

Sorry for being pedantic, but much harm is done by this misconception.

Nothing can 'potentially cure cancer', cancer is hundreds if not thousands of
(often) very different diseases.

Also put another way: cancer is simply the result of evolution at the cellular
level.

You can't 'cure' evolution, all you can do is try to implement some
'population control' strategies that will work (for a while) for certain
genetic variants.

~~~
majmun
cancer drives evolution? [[citation needed.]]

besides, nobody is asking to cure cancer in all population for all times. but
in specific individual. who may or may not reproduce later in life.

EDIT: don't need to downvote me being curios. if i didn't ask, this guys who
answered would have less chance to post this usefull stuff . so i'm somewhat
beneficial to this.

~~~
phillmv
No, you got it wrong.

Evolution drives cancer.

>besides, nobody is asking to cure cancer in all population for all times. but
in specific individual. who may or may not reproduce later in life.

Seriously? Go back and re-read what the GP said.

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hopeless
"Her dream job is to be a research professor"? It sounds like she's already
better than most research professors! Well done that girl!

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alberich
I don't get it. The girl supposedly created the "swiss army knife of cancer
treatment" and she gets only U$ 100k? This doesn't sound right... this is no
"swiss army knife" or the girl was cheated.

If the project is such a great advancement she would be able to rise lots of
money from some medical research company... like some millions of dolars.

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faramarz
I would like to know if Siemens has any stake on the "outputs" of such
competitions. Do they effectively own the patent, if there is one? Please
don't tell me she had to sign a waiver.

~~~
polyfractal
I'm unsure about the Siemens competition, but its definitely a "no" for the
ISEF. I imagine Siemens is the same.

Besides, this work was done at a university, so they would own the IP before
anyone else.

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eggywat
Just enough money to cover her college tuition me thinks

~~~
mikedmiked
Well it is actually a scholarship, as shown by the over-sized cheque in this
image: <http://i.imgur.com/qIFgX.jpg>

^ (please excuse the borderline-racist meme on the second half of that image,
it is not mine.)

~~~
artursapek
I love how an HNer was just forced to use a horrible meme from reddit because
it has the biggest reference photo available

~~~
thebooktocome
Stereotypical Asian Father is much older than reddit.

~~~
artursapek
Ok, well that particular one is from reddit

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omegant
It is only me or this page always gives problems with Iphone?.

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roadnottaken
worst. Mobile. Layout. Ever.

