Megha Joshi Wins Fourth In JSHS

The 2017 Oregon Junior Science and Humanities Symposium [JSHS] was held this year at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville from Jan. 20 to Jan. 21, where five students were chosen to represent their state at the national competition. Megha Joshi ‘19 won fourth place with her presentation, “A Path Forward to End the GMO Controversy: Mitigating the Gene Flow of Transgenic Populus tremula Using CRISPR Cas9.”
The National JSHS will take place in San Diego, California from April 26 to April 30, where the five students from Oregon will compete against 45 other regions for scholarships and prizes.
Student’s research papers are blindly judged during the first round of the competition, from which twelve student semifinalists are then chosen to present their research at the symposium. The panel of judges included Oregon scientist and engineer representatives of the Intel Corp., the University of Oregon, Acumed, the Center for Chiropractic & Pain Rehabilitation, and QA/QC Solutions.
All entries, however, were invited to attend and participate at the activities provided by the museum. This included tours of the aviation and aeronautics museums, an IMAX film screening, rocket building and launching, and an overnight campout under the Spruce Goose.
Top presenters:
·Sharanya Suresh, Westview High School, took 1st Place and $2,000 scholarship for her presentation, “The Novel Role of gC1qR in Lymphoproliferative Disorder Associated Angioedema”
·Ashwin Datta, Glencoe High School, took 2nd Place and $1,500 scholarship for his presentation, “Controlling Kinematics of Free-Floating Satellites”
·Chandler Watson, Oregon Episcopal School, took 3rd Place and $1,000 scholarship for his presentation, “Deep Learning Action Recognition on Small Data: Transfer Learning the Stanford 40 Actions Dataset”
·Megha Joshi, South Salem High School, took 4th Place for her presentation, “A Path Forward to End the GMO Controversy: Mitigating the Gene Flow of Transgenic Populus tremula Using CRISPR Cas9”
·Leo Deng, Jesuit High School, took 5th Place for his presentation, “A Novel Forest Fire Prediction Tool Utilizing Historical Fire Weather Data and Advanced Machine Learning Methods”