Oak Park and River Forest High School students enrolled in the popular Investigative Research Design and Innovation course are receiving high accolades as they present their year-long research at various science symposiums across the country this semester.
In February, 16 IRDI students presented as semi-finalists out of 26 total presenters at the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, where six out of the eight finalists selected were OPRF students.
Three of the five students selected for nationals were OPRF students Marina Sjoblom, second place overall, Sahiba Dhillon, third place overall, and Jenna Ahn, fourth place overall.
The three qualified to attend the 62nd National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium in Albuquerque, N.M. in May.
“I am exceptionally proud and humbled by the passion, perseverance, ingenuity, and collaboration that my IRDI students have shown throughout the year,” said Allison Hennings, science teacher at OPRF. “It is inspiring and invigorating to see the absolutely bright future they are helping to craft.”
This has been a rewarding year for IRDI students who took the year-long course designed for students to explore any topics they are interested in.
“They look for a gap in current published research and then they design an experiment to address that gap,” Hennings said.
Students also reach out to published mentors for mentorship along with performing the experiment, which they will explain through a research paper, a research poster and a PowerPoint presentation to be submitted to local, national and international science symposiums.
For her IRDI project, senior Sahiba presented “Optimizing Bioremediation of Lead (III) in wastewater with Lactobacillus acidophilus and Chitosan across variable pH Levels.”
“It’s pretty simple,” she said. “I basically saw if these specific bacteria, lactobacillus acidophilus, combined with chitosan could take out lead from assimilated wastewater.”
The bacteria, which is commonly found in yogurt or fermented food, can be available in developing countries, where contaminated water can be a real worry.
“Two years ago, I took a trip to India, and I visited my family’s village,” Sahiba said. “The water there, because of local jean and denim factories, they release heavy metals into the water and the village people don’t have an effective way to remediate the contaminants out of the water.”
The 17-year-old said she had devoted a lot of her own personal time to researching the topic and when she found out that IRDI students are able to pursue their own passion projects and receive funding, she knew it was the perfect opportunity to continue to dive deeper into the topic.
“Because my experiment found some success last year, I decided to continue my research and see whether changing the pH of the solution could possibly take out more lead than before,” Sahiba said. “The opportunity was amazing to be able to do this research, during a class period in the day and having access to a school laboratory.”
Students also submitted to the Illinois Junior Academy of Science symposium, with all students chosen to present on March 1, 2024, at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill.
All students qualified for state, which will be May 3-4 at Millikin University in Decatur, Ill.
Many students were also awarded special awards, including junior Amelia Hammersley, who was selected as a finalist at the competitive International Regeneron ISEF 2024, the world’s largest pre-college STEM competition, which will take place May 11-17 in Los Angeles. Amelia is the first OPRF student who has qualified for ISEF.
“It’s a big deal, they compete for like $9 million dollars in awards,” Hennings said. “It is huge. I started this course 19 years ago and I never had a student get that far. It is very rewarded and shows what hard work can do and perseverance. Seeing the reward can make it all worth it for them.”
The project was also personal to Amelia, whose sister suffered a severe concussion when she was younger and had to be hospitalized.
“I really experienced how brain injuries affect every part of someone’s life,” she said. “That inspired me to pursue neuroscience in this class.”
Amelia decided to study “neuroprotective effect of a combination of Celastrol and naproxen on acute traumatic brain injury in a drosophila melanogaster model as a potential novel pharmaceutical.”
Amelia’s new treatment would potentially promote full neurological recovery, as naproxen and ibuprofen can cause underscore side effects, including brain strokes.
“That seems to defeat the purpose if people are administered this medication to help them recover and they end up getting a worse brain injury of different sorts,” Amelia said. “The goal of this experiment was to create a medication that would diminish some of those side effects while still promoting the same amount of recovery.”
Noah Campbell, a senior, along with Sahiba, was awarded the Stockholm International Junior Regional Water Prize, which makes them qualify to compete for a chance to go to Stockholm, Sweden to be in the finals of the competition.
“I am so happy, definitely excited for the chance to go to Sweden, but I am just really happy that I was able to build something that worked,” Campbell said. “That is the most satisfying part to me.”
For Campbell’s IRDI project, he decided to use bacillus licheniformis, a resilient strain of bacteria, to treat acid mine drainage, the second largest problem right behind climate change.
“It was an intense but amazing experience,” Campbell said. “It was memorable. Especially the first time finding out my bacteria worked.”
Hennings said students are not done for the year yet, with three more competitions coming up.
“It is invaluable for them to be able to be exposed to many professionals on a global scale that can get feedback to them and allow them to see their work through different lenses,” Hennings said. “Giving them the opportunity to present at science symposiums shows them that their ideas are important and acts as a catalyst for them to keep going in STEM education.”
The IRDI research course will expand this upcoming school year and begin to include AP Research credit, said Hennings, adding that students will enroll in IRDI/AP research next year but carry out the same curriculum IRDI has been following.
Correction, April 19: An earlier version of this article erroneously contained material attributed to a student. That material has since been removed. We apologize for the error.
