Maheetha Bharadwaj
By Sharon Stevens Education Reporter
St. Louis (KSDK) - A $100,000 award for what you might call a competition for brainiacs.
It's the Intel Science Talent Search 2012, and a St. Louis area teenager is one step closer to claiming the grand prize.
There were nearly 2,000, and now there are 300 semi-finalists. Maheetha Bharadwaj, 16, is the only Missouri contestant. She's a senior at Thomas Jefferson School in Sunset Hills.
"The title of my project is: Utilizing the DGT gene in Escherichia coli to Assess the Role of DGTP Pools in Mutagenesis," she said.
Now for those of us who need a translation, Maheetha's project is broad and detailed but a simple translation is that the project aims to provide more insight into what causes cancerous cells to mutate.
"If we know what causes it, we'll know how to prevent the mutations itself from occurring," she said.
Thomas Jefferson School has only 91 students, and they come from all over the world. The curriculum is tough. It includes mandatory Greek and Latin courses, and all advanced placement courses for seniors.
Maheetha will find out later this month if she's one of 40 finalists. If she does make the cut, she'll get a chance to make her presentation live in Washington D.C.
All semi-finalists in the Intel competition receive $1,000 and their schools get the same amount.
Maheetha says she's excited and hopes to make it to the finals.
When she's not studying, Maheeta volunteers for several community projects, and she and her 12-year-old sister like to play piano and sing karaoke!
Maheetha's parents are Mythili and Chandramouli Bharadwaj of Chesterfield.
The semi-finalists in the Intel competition come from more than 180 schools from across the nation.
KSDK
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