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WSAS sponsored students have successful week at AAAS-AJAS Conference 2015

Report by: Gary Foss, K-12 Committe Member Representative, Technical Fellow Structural Dynamics Lab
Boeing Test & Evaluation.

I accompanied students Swetha Shutthanandan and Kathy Landoni to the meeting of the American Junior Academy of Science (AJAS), held Feb 11-15, at the AAAS meeting in San Jose CA.

2015 AJAS fellows from 24 states	Kathy and Swetha with one of the experiments

We arrived on Wednesday around noon. After lunch, we had some spare time before AJAS activities so we visited the San Jose Tech Museum, 1 block away from the convention center and hotel. The museum has some great hands on exhibits. Kathy and Swetha are shown here in the "wet lab" inserting jellyfish DNA into bacteria to make them glow under UV light.

We registered later in the afternoon and attended the AJAS reception and opening ceremonies in the evening. The highlight was an entertaining presentation by Brian Holmes, Professor of Physics at San Jose State, on "The Physics of Brass Musical Instruments."

The next morning was tour day. The three of us were signed up for the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) tour. The facility is a national laboratory staffed by 1500 people funded by the Department of Energy, and operated by Stanford University. We came to learn that SLAC is the world’s most advanced x-ray laboratory. Using the 12 GeV accelerator beam in conjunction with uniquely designed sensor arrays, they can take pictures of individual molecules with "an extremely intense femtosecond x-ray pulse".

Lunch was provided by Stanford University followed by a presentation from Associate Prof. Nicholas Melosh on "How Atoms are Organized, and Why it Matters to our Everyday Lives".

Later in the afternoon, Kathy and Swetha took a tour of the Stanford Anatomy Lab. Kathy was very excited that she had the opportunity to hold a human brain in her hands.

On Thursday evening, we heard a few opening remarks from University of California President Janet Napolitano, followed by a keynote delivered by AAAS President Gerald Fink. Dr Fink spoke about the paradox that the bulk of our genome material appears to be noncoding "junk DNA".

On Friday, Kathy and Swetha had AJAS Breakfast with Scientists. On Friday afternoon, a student poster session was set up in the AAAS exhibit area. Kathy and Swetha displayed their posters to AAAS members.

In the late afternoon on Friday, we went to a plenary lecture by Dr. Daphne Koller, professor in the Stanford AI lab and best known as the President and co-founder of Coursera. In 2013, Time Magazine named Dr. Koller as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. The day was capped off with a wonderful AJAS dinner sponsored by The Seattle Foundation.

On Saturday morning we attended AAAS sessions, followed by AJAS oral presentations in the afternoon. Swetha chose the traditional symposium format and gave an excellent presentation. Kathy chose a new informal round table format and greatly enjoyed her discussion with other student researchers.

The late afternoon plenary speaker was Dr David Baker of the University of Washington who spoke about “Post-evolutionary Biology: Design of Novel Protein Structures” and protein folding. After the NAAS/AJAS banquet, the speaker was Dr. Jamie Vernon, Editor in Chief of American Scientist.

Kathy and Swetha were inducted as lifetime fellows of the American Junior Academy of Science. It isn’t so obvious to high school students so I explained the significance of this honor. These are the 2015 AJAS fellows from 24 states. Kathy and Swetha are in the third row towards the left. Ed and Lee Brogie, AJAS and NAAS directors, are in the bottom row on the left.

We returned to Seattle on Sunday morning. I greatly enjoyed serving as a chaperone at this event and I think this is a wonderful opportunity every year for a few Washington student scientists to get connected with the world community of scientific professionals.

Photo slideshow of students at the event

Messages from the Students to WSAS Members

WSAS Members,

I would like to thank each of you for helping to provide me the opportunity to attend the National American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose. I especially enjoyed being surrounded with diverse people, equally interested in nurturing a passion for all things science, technology, engineering and math.

Science has long captivated me and it is deeply embedded into how I live and view the world. Living in an isolated, rural community, opportunities are limited. Additionally, the experience helped to cultivate my sense of independence, increase my network of peers and professionals engaged in the STEM fields and expand my view of STEM careers by helping link my classroom STEM education to a potential career path.

Science is my passion and will play an important role in my career. Making the world a better place to live, not just for humans, but for all organisms, is my ultimate goal. Again, thank you for providing me an others an experience of a life-time.

Sincerely,
Katherine Grace Landoni

__________________________________________________________________________

Dear All,

I just wanted to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to go to the AJAS conference in San Jose last month. I had an amazing experience and learned a lot! I would definitely go again, and hope that other students in the future will have the same great experience.
Thanks again for all of your support!
I would also like to thank Gary for taking us to San Jose with his busy schedule. We had a great time!
Thanks.

Regards,
Swetha Shutthanandan