CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — A local eighth grader has been named one of 30 finalists for a premier national middle school STEM research competition.
Sai Sri Valli Mogilineedi, a student at Mountain View Middle School in Mechanicsburg, will compete alongside her fellow finalists in the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge (Thermo Fisher JIC) during the week of Oct. 23-28 in Washington, D.C.
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The top-30, representing 17 states as well as Puerto Rico, were selected from a field of 300 semifinalists. Over $100,000 in awards will be up for grabs in the finals, including a $25,000 Aspiring Scientists Cultivating Exciting New Discoveries (ASCEND) award and awards of $3,500 and $2,500 for first and second place, respectively. Each finalist will receive a $500 cash prize.
The Society for Science, which sponsors the Thermo Fisher JIC program, said that Mogilineedi was inspired by her grandfather’s struggles with heartburn. Reasoning that part of the reason why over-the-counter medication didn’t work for him and other people dealing with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) was that the drugs dissolved rapidly, she “decided to try to create a controlled-release antacid that would last longer.”…