Governor’s School student wins grand prize sending her to Phoenix, AZ finals
by Regina Carson
The Western Virginia Regional Science and Engineering Fair is an annual event that celebrates science by bringing together competing high school students from Botetourt, Craig, Franklin, and Roanoke counties, and the cities of Roanoke and Salem. This year’s fair was held March 19 at Roanoke College.
Chichi Ugochukwu, a Roanoke Valley Governor’s School and William Fleming High School senior was one of the regional fair’s two Grand Award winners!
Chichi will receive an all-expense paid trip to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world’s largest pre-science science competition, to be held this year in Phoenix, AZ, May 8 – 13.
At ISEF Chichi will interact with over 1,700 other gifted young scientists from more than 75 countries, regions and territories who will be competing for $4 million in prizes and special awards. Last year’s top winner at ISEF received a $75,000 cash prize for developing a new air inlet system for airplane cabins.
At the Governor’s School, Chichi is enrolled in the Mentorship elective, and her award-winning research project in the microbiology field is titled, “Isolation and Investigation of Streptomyces Species for Anti-Bacterial/Cancer Agents.” Through a Governor’s School partnership with Jefferson College of Health Sciences, Chichi was paired with mentor Dr. Robin Davies, a Princeton-educated scientist who currently serves as the program director of Biomedical Sciences at Jefferson College. Dr. Davies helped Chichi develop a project idea in October and has supervised her progress ever since.
Though she has had significant success with her project already, Chichi plans to continue her research throughout the summer. “I want to take this project so much further,” she said. “For months I have been investigating new antibiotics and anti-tumor agents that are effective against colon cancer cells, but I want to more narrowly define their dosage, test them against other cancers, and even test them on healthy cells to be sure they are targeting only cancerous cells. With research, there’s always so much more to do!”
Chichi’s research has taken her far already, but in the fall, it will take her even further. She has accepted an offer to join The College of William and Mary’s undergraduate research program, where she plans to study biology.
