Four SSMV Students are Siemens Competition Winners

From 17 project submissions, two School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt (SSMV) seniors have been recognized as finalists in the national Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology for their team project and will go on to compete at the regional level. Additionally, two SSMV seniors have been named as semifinalists for their individual project submissions.

Finalists:

• Jyotishka "Jyo" Biswas and Jaron "Shalom" Rottman-Yang completed their project in James Dickerson's laboratory (Department of Physics and Astronomy), entitled "Post-Electrophoretic Deposition Electrochemical Separation: An Original Method for Carbon Nanotube Film Fabrication"

Semifinalists:

• Jasmine Kelly completed her project in Tiffiny Tung's laboratory (Department of Anthropology), entitled "Reconstructing Climate Change and Food Production in the Ancient Peruvian Andes Using Stable Isotope Analysis"
• Lauren Lu completed her project in Christopher Williams' laboratory (Department of Medicine: Gastroenterology), entitled "MTG16 and Zbtb Family Members Interact to Repress the Wnt Target Matrilysin"

This marks the second year that Dr. Williams has mentored a semifinalist in the competition. Jasmine traveled to Peru as a part of her project with Dr. Tung.

Jyo and Shalom are the first students from the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt to advance to the regional finals which will be held on November 4 and 5 at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Siemens reports that 2,436 students registered to enter the competition this year for a record number of 1,541 projects submitted. Of the entries 317 students were named semifinalists and 96 were named finalists, representing 35 states.

Congratulations to all of the students who submitted entries.