On April 5, a group of PHS students placed third at UC Berkeley’s Bioengineering High School Competition (BioEHS). The annual event included a total of 57 teams from various high schools. For the competition, teams attempt to engineer a solution to a biomedical or bioenvironmental issue.
“[The competition] is a great way for students interested in biological sciences and engineering to get a sense of what is involved and all the different aspects of it,” biology teacher Shelley Seto-Rosen said.
Besides teaching, Seto-Rosen also served as a coach for students participating.
“My role at the very least is recruiting teams and getting them signed up,” Seto-Rosen said. “I’m there more for support”.
Senior Genevieve Hiller, a member of the placing team, who’s members were Abigail Jacoby, Inaya Majid, Kalyani Spieckerman, and Laurel Minor said she believes it is important that PHS is involved in such competitions.
“It shows that our ability and education is strong enough to compete with other high level highschools,” Hiller said.
Her group’s project was an estrogen tracker and administrator for those undergoing menopause.
“We made a closed loop system because estrogen treatment is very common,” Hiller said.
Another group consisting of junior Niko Kalamas, and seniors Logan Watral, Aman Jajodia, Ayan Jajodia, and Max Gaylord designed a solution to a chytrid fungus that affects multiple frog species.
“We used gene silencing to stop the spread of its flagella which allowed it to move around,” junior Niko Kalamas said.
According to the BioEHSC’s student organization website, undergraduate students studying bioengineering who are part of the honor society at UC Berkeley are in charge of organizing and running the contest. Each team is assigned mentors who are currently attending the college to provide insight throughout the competition.
“We met with her once a week to discuss, and she helped us format our project,” junior Laurel Minor said.
Each group made a presentation about their proposed solutions to pitch to academic professionals, including students in the honor society and professors.
“This was all a group effort so we made a script and edited it which was really fun,” Hiller said.
Besides serving as a way to display their expertise, competing in BioEHSC has helped students determine their field of study.
“It confirmed for me what I wanted to study,” Hiller said. “I’m going for biomedical engineering in college.”
Hiller said although the competition is primarily centered around biological science, some aspects are more geared toward an industry perspective like pitching to investors and determining the feasibility of the product.
“A lot of concepts are only kept as concepts because they are really difficult to do,” Hiller said.
Students believe the competition provides a means to further explore their academic interests.
“It gives a good opportunity to students if they want to delve into passions that stem from school,” Minor said.
Kalamas said the event gave him the ability to pursue research topics.
“This was a unique opportunity to do research and develop a solution to a problem that we care about,” Kalamas said.
