I'm impressed beyond words by these kids, though I think I'd give her the top prize. Watching my grandfather's final days taken away from him by the effects of morphine has always made me wish so much that we had much more effective non-narcotic painkillers
She's in top 4, awarded $600? I dunno this is a confusing layout/structure for how the program is conducted seeing as how the headline is $9m awarded.
More recently the US scientific funding bodies have had summer programs for kids who wouldn't otherwise get that kind of access, but it's still the exception. It takes more than a summer to do this kind of work.
Edit: quick search for the father's name brings up this professor of biochemistry at UT Tyler:
https://www.uttyler.edu/directory/chemistry/lee-jiyong.php
and mom's name brings up this professor of pharmaceutical science:
https://www.unthsc.edu/college-of-pharmacy/eul-hyun-suh
I don't mean to take anything away from the kid or suggest that they don't work hard, are smart, etc., but these kinds of science fairs are fundamentally about access.
Completely agree there, which kind of brings me to a related thought:
One thing I do wonder is, if you look at a few hundred years ago a lot of the inventors in math, physics, engineering, were a tiny group of people with access to resources and education. You're always reading the same names.
It seems if we as a society could decide that science is more important to us, with 8 billion people on earth, if we gave more access, time and incentives to people we should be able to increase the amount of scientific results exponentially.
For example, the US government dramatically increased grad school funding through the 80s-2000s, and the primary outcome was an employment crisis amongst PhDs in the sciences. In the 40s-70s it was fairly straightforward to establish a career in research, but these days it's Hunger Games.
Scientific innovation cannot be made to happen faster by throwing more money at it. You can produce more of it (maybe), but only in the same way that you can find more gold by crushing more rocks. Either way, you have to crush the rocks.
Science fairs and the like are a weird little subculture of college-application polishers, in part because nobody in their right mind actually wants to become a scientist. I think it's a safe bet that the young woman in this article ends up doing something more lucrative with her life (and good for her, if she does).
[0]https://www.addictiongroup.org/drugs/opioids/morphine/overdo...
The instant antidote is Narcan which is available over the counter at pharmacies in some states.
Nobody discusses these mundane drawbacks when they talk about the evils of heroin addiction. When you're high, you puke and you cannot give a shit. Both figuratively and literally.
Those were not prbly his final days. he was artifically kept alive by modern medicine. Those final days are not natural part of dying.
edit: oh i see. its really blurry but the silyl modified tylenol is predicted to have good trpv1 binding computationally. afaict no in vitro or in vivo studies were done. could be cool. not sure if diethylethynylphenylsilyl group has good Lipinski properties though (i suspect not)
edit: s/aspirin/Tylenol
Strong recommendation for any science-lover.
I'm very impressed by the level of chemistry demonstrated by a 17 year old. During my time as a chemistry student this level of project and synthesis probably could have been included as a chunk of a master's thesis. Did she perform all the synthesis herself? That takes a decent amount of experimental skill and more importantly what lab did she do all of this in?
Any uni ought to be delighted to get a precocious talent like this!
For pain release, paracetamol it's very modest. Some effect for light head pain, zero for strong pain. Zero effect for strong back pain. Ibuprofen works better in all these cases but comes with stomach damage if taken for long.
Any more and it's liver damage.
And then it isn't necessarily the case that the identified reactions are the most cost effective available.
Acetaminophen's effective dose is pretty close to the dangerous dose, but I would take light use to mean you take something maybe once a month max and only a single dose (or maybe even just one pill when the dose is two pills). At that level of use, I don't think you're at risk of anything.
Otoh, if the title is accurate and it can be more effective at pain release and less damaging to the liver, that would be great for people who experience pain frequently.
ItsHarper•4h ago
epcoa•4h ago
buckle8017•3h ago
Something tells me he didn't launch the satellite.
felineflock•3h ago
https://www.societyforscience.org/regeneron-sts/2025-student...
qzw•2h ago
jmcgough•3h ago
hooo•1h ago
fracus•3h ago
14•2h ago
Glyptodon•2h ago
throwawaymaths•2h ago
whats surprising is that parents let their kids do ochem at 17!! thats some toxic shit :). safety is why chemistry is not a super popular field at high school level science fairs.
mofunnyman•1h ago