Students who competed in the Greater East Alabama Regional Science and Engineering Fair, or GEARSEF, received honors at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest pre-college science competition.

Edmond Strickland, of South Montgomery Academy, won 2^nd place in the engineering division. Alexis Jones, of Auburn High School, won 3^rd place in the biochemistry division.

Hannah James, of Wetumpka High School, also won a top award for her research involving juvenile idiopathic arthritis. She plans to attend Auburn University in the fall.

GEARSEF is a regional affiliate fair of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Intel ISEF annually provides a forum for millions of students from more than 50 countries, regions and territories to showcase their independent research. GEARSEF hosts middle and high school students from 19 counties in central and southeast Alabama. The top students in each category and division earn the chance to compete at the Alabama State Science and Engineering Fair. Several exceptional high school students from GEARSEF advanced to the Intel ISEF to compete against the top 1,500 students in the world for nearly $4 million in prizes and scholarships.

For more information on GEARSEF and other COSAM Outreach programs, visit the website.

Nathan Tubbs (pictured second from left), marine biology ’05, is a middle school teacher in Brooklyn, NY, whose students won the first Intrepid International Space Station Challenge, an experiment design competition created by the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, in partnership with the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) and the Ramon Foundation. Tubbs’ team took first place among the 42 competing teams from five New York City public schools.

The team designed an experiment that explores how microgravity affects the germination of pot mum seeds. The experiment will be sent to the ISS on SSEP Mission 8 in the fall. An astronaut aboard the ISS will conduct the experiment. After approximately six weeks in orbit, the experiment will be returned safely to Earth for data collection and analysis.

All student experiments were designed to work within an existing, flight-certified research mini-laboratory designed by NanoRacks, LLC, and provided through SSEP. In order to give students an experience comparable to the reality of the scientific field, the competition mirrored how professional researchers formally compete to obtain limited research assets. Each team, composed of three to five students, proposed an experiment designed to assess the impact of microgravity on a physical, chemical or biological system in any number of diverse fields, including seed germination, crystal growth, physiology and life cycles of microorganisms, cell biology and growth, food studies, or micro-aquatic life.

As his students worked on designing their experiments, Tubbs sought the guidance of Bob Boyd, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and former professor of Tubbs, along with other Auburn faculty members. Tubbs’ team was commended for consulting with the researchers and professors.

Tubbs is working to make it possible for the students to attend the launch in Cape Canaveral on June 24. For more information on Tubbs and his sixth grade class, go to this link: www.mrtubbs.info. 

Travis Bray is the founder and executive director of Hereditary Colon Cancer Foundation. He is a colon cancer “previvor,” surviving a predisposition to cancer due to a hereditary mutation. At age 15, and after losing his father and grandfather to Familial Adenomatous Polyposis, Bray had his colon removed to prevent a 100-percent risk of cancer. After working for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, and becoming very ill, Bray started the Hereditary Colon Cancer Foundation as a way to educate and inform families and medical professionals affected by the disease.

Bray was invited to Auburn to attend a presentation by Thomas E. Albrecht-Schmitt, and shortly after, selected his lab to conduct his graduate studies.

He graduated from Auburn with a 4.0 GPA, numerous awards, and had published more than a dozen publications.

“After Auburn, I joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as the Berkeley Actinide Post-Doctoral Fellow where I researched heavy metal gas phase chemistry for two years. My shining achievement was to build a negative pressure glove box to interface with a gas phase analytical instrument (mass spectrometer) that was approved for transuranium elements. In short, I helped develop one of the only instruments in the world capable of probing the gas phase chemistry of elements like Plutonium,” said Bray. “At age 35, I was the same age as my paternal grandfather when he died of colon cancer. My father had passed the year before with issues related to the disease. I thought my time was short. After months of being extremely ill, we found the cause of my illness and were able to correct it with diet modifications. During this six-month period of time, I became very aware of how FAP and other forms of hereditary colon cancer affect families around the world. I was amazed how well I had it and, with a new lease on life and a clear vision of how to fill the needs of this community, I quit my job at Argonne and started what is now the Hereditary Colon Cancer Foundation.” 

Bray’s foundation works with families and the medical community to help fill the gaps in care and services for those diagnosed with FAP. The foundation helps facilitate healthy social networking opportunities and have maintained a connection to research by being a premier tool for clinical trial recruitment and advocacy in Washington, D.C.

For more information on the Hereditary Colon Cancer Foundation, visit the website.