Montco Teen Wins Award For Project Proposal to Eliminate Zika Virus

ABINGTON, PA -- An Abington Junior High School is student has been selected as a national award winner for a project proposal to eliminate the Zika virus.

Sofiya Lysenko, 14, earned 4th place out of 600 participants and 313 projects from across the nation as part of the Project CS Girls Competition, which works to bring national attention to issues surrounding the gender gap in computer science.

Lysenko, mentored by Princeton University sophomore Jennifer Yin, created a vaccine for the Zika
virus with gel electrophoresis and data mining. She said the project was based off of a science fair project which had been recognized with an Outstanding Research Award by Temple University's School of Medicine Fels Institute for Cancer Research.

Zika virus spreads to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito. Zika infection can also be spread by infected men and women to their sex partners. There is no vaccine or treatment
for Zika and many people infected with Zika have no symptoms. Of those who do have symptoms, the most common complaints are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes).

Lysenko used the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio to write the program and to predict the Zika virus' next mutation. Doing this kind of creative science is nothing new for the 14-year-old, however.

"I've been really interested in computer science and technology from a young age," she said, noting that she went to Lego and VEX robotics camps, and competed in a Penn State robotics competition.

Project CS Girls was founded by Harvard freshman Pooja Chandrashekar in an effort to encourage more girls and young women to engage in computer science and to raise awareness of the gender gap in the field. Lyskenko said the experience with Project CS has been inspiring.

"This program has really opened my eyes to the gender gap - and inspired me to do my own project to help close it. The National Gala and the competition itself was a once in a lifetime experience. I learned so much and connected with so many girls that are also interested in computer science. This competition was a great inspiration, and I am working on starting a computer science club to promote computer science to girls at the
Abington Junior High School."

Lysenko will enter ninth grade this fall.

Patch file photo.