Young scientists recognized at state science fair

Aditi Avinash and Kapil Bhandaram won the Colorado Medical Society Awards for Excellence at the 2023 Colorado State Science and Engineering Fair held on April 13, 2023, at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

A longtime supporter of the state science fair, each year the CMS Education Foundation presents an award to one student in the junior high division and one student in the senior high division for the Biomedical and Health Sciences category. These students receive $100 and an invitation to the CMS Annual Meeting to display their project and attend the President’s Gala.

Northern Colorado Medical Society leaders Sean Pauzauskie, MD, Cory Carroll, MD, and Donna Sullivan, MD, served as the official Colorado Medical Society judges at this year’s fair.

The junior division winner, Kapil Bhandaram, a seventh grader at Campus Middle School in Greenwood Village, presented his project, “Is there a relationship between meditation and muscle reaction time?” Given that reaction time is critical in everyday activities such as driving and sports, he measured baseline muscle reaction times before meditation in his study group – noting age, gender and exercise habit – then final muscle reaction times after one week of twice-a-day meditation. He found that meditation can improve reaction times in his small sample size.

The senior division winner, Aditi Avinash, an 11th grader at Rock Canyon High School in Littleton, presented her project, “Model validation and preclinical testing of digestive enzymes for gluten breakdown.” She aims to develop a medication for people living with gluten intolerance or celiac disease. She identified three fruit enzymes that synergistically break down gluten when combined and proposed two models of how the enzymes act together to degrade the gluten molecule. She then performed studies to validate the models and felt the results provide her a path to move ahead to formulation.

The judges praised both winners for following a thoughtful and scientific process, and fully grasping their experiments – especially given their young age. They show great promise for future careers in science and, hopefully, medicine. ■

Top: Kapil Bhandaram was awarded CMS’s Award of Excellence in the junior category for his project, “Is there a relationship between meditation and muscle reaction time?”

Bottom: Aditi Avinash was awarded CMS’s Award of Excellence in the senior category for her project, “Model validation and preclinical testing of digestive enzymes for gluten breakdown.”