HHS Rising Senior Attends NJ Governor's School In Sciences

Press release from Githa Krishnan:

August 5, 2020

For the past three weeks, from July 13th to July 31st, Aravind Krishnan, a rising senior at Hillsborough High School, attended the prestigious New Jersey Governor’s School in Sciences (NJGSS). The highly selective program begins with a nomination process, in which each high school in New Jersey can nominate 1 to 3 students to apply to NJGSS depending on the class size. Following this, 60 students from the entire state are selected from the pool of applicants. Alumni of the program include Adam Reiss, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Laura Overdeck, mathematics education entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Usually, the program is held at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. However, this year, due to COVID-19, NJGSS was conducted virtually. The NJGSS program consists of an intensive combination of classes, a book discussion seminar, and a culminating research project.

Aravind’s coursework at NJGSS 2020 consisted of Neurobiology, Molecular Orbital Theory, and Human Evolution. He enjoyed the intensity of the classes taught and the deep exploration each of his Drew University professors conducted in classes, ranging from the neuropathology of Alzheimer’s disease to the complexities of chemical bonding, and even how hominids evolved over millions of years. For his seminar, he explored cancer through the lenses of biology, economics, politics, and more as he and his class read The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

His most rewarding experience throughout the program was the team research project he conducted for 3 weeks. Aravind’s project, titled “Computational Drug Discovery For Covid-19 Through Identification Of Candidate FDA-Approved Small Molecules Targeting 12 SARS-CoV-2 Proteins”, centered on identifying potential novel therapies for COVID-19 by computationally simulating and studying docking interactions between over 2,000 molecular ligands and several proteins from SARS-CoV-2, coloquially referred to as the Coronavirus.

The entire NJGSS program fostered a close-knit community amongst Aravind and the 59 other top young scientists in New Jersey, even if all their interactions involved a computer and webcam. Aravind would like to thank his fellow peers, professors, the private and government sponsors of the program, and especially the entire staff for managing to conduct the first virtual NJGSS program, in order to foster the interests of the next generation of leaders in science.

This press release was produced by Githa Krishnan. The views expressed here are the author's own.