Illinois, Michigan Students Among National Finalists at Siemens Competition

Jan. 2010

Midwestern News

Individual Finalist Marissa Suchyta

Marissa Suchyta of Chicago received a $40,000 scholarship as a finalist in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology in New York City on Dec. 7, 2009. The team of Randy Jia of Rochester Hills, Mich., and David Lu of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., shared a $30,000 scholarship as finalists in the team competition.

Suchyta, a senior at the University of Chicago Laboratory High School, was honored for her research of the mechanism by which the protein geminin prevents DNA from replicating more than one time before a cell divides. Overreplication of DNA will lead to genetic instability, which in turn gives rise to cells exhibiting uncontrolled cell division. The project, titled Geminin Mutant Reveals the Mechanism to Inhibit DNA Re-Replication, has implications for the development of new approaches to treating diseases such as cancer.

“Ms. Suchyta understood that the research was a great approach to study the replication process. By studying a modified geminin protein she could investigate how geminin structure affects its function,” said Joseph O’Tousa, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. "It is important that the replication machinery allows one and only one start during the S phase of mitosis, and geminin regulates this. The work adds to our knowledge of how DNA replication is controlled, a fundamental process involved in the development and proper maintenance of tissues and a potential target in managing disease conditions."

Team Finalists Randy Jia and David Lu

Jia, a junior, and Lu, a sophomore, are both students at Detroit Country Day School in Beverly Hills, Mich. Their graph theory project, titled Matching Preclusions for Augmented Cubes, presents a way to measure the strength of a network in the event of link failure. This study examines the matching preclusion number as it relates to the augmented cube graph. The augmented cube has been proposed as an example of a network that is resistant to link failure.

“In certain instances a desirable property of a network is that each node can pair up with a partner. The team answers the question of how many links need to be broken until it’s no longer possible to pair up the node in the augmented cube,” said David Galvin, assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Notre Dame. “Their project uses clever mathematical techniques and extends our understanding of an important and natural network parameter.”

The Siemens Competition was launched in 1998 to recognize America’s best and brightest math and science students. The annual competition is administered by the College Board and judged by a panel of nationally renowned scientists and mathematicians, and this year was headed by lead judge Thomas Jones, a prominent scientist, author, pilot and former NASA astronaut. In another record-setting year, 2,151 students registered to enter the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology in 2009 for a total of 1,348 project submissions, which is a 14 percent increase in project submissions from 2008 and more than a 12 percent increase in the number of registrations. For more information, visit the Siemens Foundation on the Web. In April, the College Board will welcome Jennifer Harper-Taylor, vice president of the Siemens Foundation, as a keynote speaker at the College Board’s A Dream Deferred™ conference in Atlanta.