Greenwich Junior Takes First Prize at National Science Symposium

From Greenwich Public Schools:Greenwich High School junior Shobhita Sundaram received First Place at the 2017 National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS), held in San Diego, CA last week (April 26-30). She received a $12,000 prize for her award winning research entitled :Detection of Premalignant Pancreatic Cancer via Computational Analysis of Serum Proteomic Profiles.: Two GHS students - Sundaram and William Yin - were awarded the opportunity to compete at the 55 th Annual National Symposium by virtue of their respective First and Second Place finishes at the Connecticut JSHS in March. Sundaram is the first GHS student to place first at the National Symposium.

GHS Science Research Teacher Andrew Bramante describes Sundaram’s award-winning project, “In her research, Shobhi tackles one of the more difficult to detect, and as such, one of the deadliest diseases... pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is currently one of the deadliest, with a five-year survival rate of just 7%. Early detection of pancreatic cancer, while still localized, increases the survival rate to 30%. However, to date, such a diagnostic tool that could detect a tumor at such an early stage is nonexistent. Detection of pancreatic cancer is hindered by its unique characteristics, including its location well within the abdomen, as well as the rate of growth, and aggressiveness of tumor progression. All too often, symptoms are noticed only after spread of the disease. In response to this critical need, Shobhi developed a new software based program that could examine the (Mass Spectral) data of a patient's blood, years before that patient would develop symptoms of pancreatic cancer. Her program would determine, in as little as two seconds, whether that person would develop pancreatic cancer in the future, with greater than 80% accuracy, based on the presence of inter-related protein fragments contained within the patient's blood analysis. As a pre-screening tool at a doctor's office, a positive result from her blood analysis program would place that person at high risk, and trigger close monitoring of that person's abdominal area, so that the disease would be caught in its earliest stages, creating increased opportunity for successful treatment.”

Photo: From left, Shobhita Sundaram and William Yin. Photo credit: Greenwich Public Schools