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After seven weeks of continuous competition, a group of Regional Occupational Program (ROP) Biotechnology students at Dougherty Valley High School proved their scientific acumen by winning first place in a Biological Engineering competition.
Officially announced on Monday, the BioEHSC Bioengineering Competition is an annual group research and design competition for high school students, taking place every spring and run by the University of California Berkeley Bioengineering Honor Society.
To help high school students explore bioengineering, BioEHSC tasks contestants with identifying a problem in medicine or biology and having them design a bioengineering solution in seven weeks.
Representing Contra Costa County in the regional biotech competition, the Dougherty Valley High School team won first prize for their project “Cocktail of Biologics for Breaking down Plastics.”
“The team designed projects that addressed modern problems using Biotechnology and Bioengineering design processes,” said Kathy Huang, who teaches two sections of ROP Biotechnology Accelerated and Research courses at Dougherty Valley. “Even during our period of no in-class instruction, the students continued to work to complete the project.”
Biotechnology industry professionals and academic faculty judged the project, which sought to solve plastic pollution and climate crisis and promote a positive environmental economy.
Typically for the competition, Huang will take students to UC Berkeley for the in-person Symposium, featuring UC Berkeley lab tours; however, due to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent shelter-in-place order, this year’s competition was completely virtually. Students attended virtual keynote talks by UC Berkeley undergraduate students and PhD students and attended student panels from all ranges in biotech educational pathways.
The Dougherty Valley student team included Amruta Baradwaj, Ryan Motta, Jahnavi Reddy and Abdul Saidmumtaz. The team’s UC Berkeley mentors were Yolanda Shen and Bryan Wong.
“I had these students in Biotech Level 1 last year and they are all seniors now,” says Huang. “I am so happy and proud of them. They all said that this was a big highlight of their senior year.”
