Project SEED is a flagship program of American Chemical Society because of its unique chemistry related research opportunity to economically disadvantaged HS students. This year CSW supported 18 high school students from Washington DC (McKinley Technology HS, Woodrow Wilson HS), Virginia (Thomas Jefferson HS, John Randolph Tucker HS) and Maryland (Highpoint HS, Wheaton HS, Walter Johnson HS). These students successfully completed their summer research projects at great research institutions such as Georgetown University, George Washington University, University of Maryland (College Park and Baltimore County) and NIST with broad spectrum of research projects.
The CSW-SEED committee organized SEED Research symposium on September 12, 2015 at ACS HQ. At the symposium, CSW president Dr. Alan Anderson welcomed the attendees and congratulated all the SEED fellows for their accomplishments. Selected SEED students presented short research talks. Ms. Aisha Abdulkarimu from Wheaton HS, who worked at GWU with Prof Massiah discussed her exciting research on cloning and purifying a protein which is suppressor gene. Mr. Harrison Razanajatovo from Highpoint HS, shared his research accomplishment on protein-protein interaction studies using gold nanoparticles conducted with Prof. Marie-Christine Daniel, UMBC. Ms. Sindy rosales from HighPoint HS explained her research on hydrogels that having potential applications in medical field as drug delivery vehicles. Ms. Rosales did 2015 and 2014 summer Research at UMD-college Park with Prof. Jeffrey Davis. Ms. Ariane Chandler from McKinley Tech HS, did summer research at Prof. Laronde-Leblanc’s lab at UMD, College park discussed her summer research on Investigation of the effects of knocked down and over expression of RioK1 on cancer related processes. Final speaker of this session Ms. Jeniffer Song from Thomas Jefferson HS summarize her SEED research on design of Rickettsial outer membrane Protein B peptides for co crystallization with lysine methyltransferases from Rickettsia bacteria. After the research talks all the SEED fellows presented and explained their SEED research as poster presentation. “A good balance of oral presentations” indicated one of the attendee. “The most successful part of this event was the presentations and seeing the SEED Fellows Projects” noted another participant.
Dr. Anderson also awarded a certificate of accomplishment to each SEED fellows. The best presentation award was held; the CSW-SEED committee would like to congratulate to Mr. John Arcibal (John Randolph Tucker HS) and Ms. Jasmine James (Wheaton HS) who won the first and second prize for their presentation, respectively. The symposium was well attended by SEED mentors, graduate students, students’ parents, High school chemistry teachers, and CSW members. The closing remarks and vote of thanks was presented by Dr. Walter Benson (FDA, rtd).
Photo credit: Ajay Mallia
