New York girl wins Intel talent search with encryption project
WASHINGTON (March 14, 2000 10:31 a.m. EST nandotimes.com) - A 17-year-old Romanian-born girl who embedded a computer message in the gene sequence of a DNA strand has been named the nation's best young scientist.
Viviana Risca, a senior at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, N.Y., won a $100,000 college scholarship when she bested 10 other high school seniors on Monday in the 59th Intel Science Talent Search competition.
Risca said her project in steganography, a data encryption technology that allows a computer user to hide a file within another file, was a simple one. Risca, who emigrated from Romania eight years ago, embedded the secret message "June 6 Invasion: Normandy."
Technologies like steganography can protect sensitive electronic information from interception or eavesdropping, but they can also wreak havoc if used by terrorists and criminals.
Formerly known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the contest has been nicknamed the "Junior Nobel Prize." Past winners include five Nobel laureates, nine MacArthur Foundation fellows and two Fields medalists.
Forty finalists came here to compete for the award.
Jayce Getz, a senior at Big Sky High School in Missoula, Mont., won second prize and a $75,000 scholarship for a math project on partition function. And Feng Zhang, a senior at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa, won third prize and a $50,000 scholarship for a biochemistry project in molecular virology.
The other winners in the top 10, their schools, the amounts of their scholarships and their projects were:
Alexander Schwartz, Radnor (Pa.) High School, $25,000, abstract algebra concerning Abelian groups
Eugene Simuni, 18, Midwood High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., $25,000, a biochemistry project that investigated G proteins
Matthew Reece, duPont Manual Magnet High School, Louisville, Ky., $25,000, a proposal on fluid dynamics problems
Kerry Ann Geiler, 17, Massapequa (N.Y.) High School,$20,000 for a project on communication by ants
Elizabeth Williams, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, Rolling Hills Estates, Calif., $20,000, perception of light and shape by the brain
Zachary Cohn, 17, Half Hollow Hills East High School in Dix Hills, N.Y., $20,000 for a study of perfect squares
Bob Cherng, Troy High School, Fullerton, Calif., $20,000, the transition of ammonia and hydrogen halide into ammonium halide.
The other 30 finalists received $5,000 scholarships. |
