Paulina Naydenkov
High School Intern
I am currently a highschool junior taking classes at CNM and UNM. I participated in Science Fair with a diesel engineering project. The first year the project won third in the regional portion in the second year the project made it the international leg of science fair. This project engineered new methods for diesel extraction from nontraditional method through transesterification for organic material ie. oils and pyrolisis for non-organic material ie. plastic.
The ongoing project has a goal of increasing the rate of cell death of ovarian cancer cells by combining hydrophobic ovarian cancer drug with either a hydrophobic or hydrophilic ovarian cancer drug. When the tumor is too big, it cannot be operated on, it needs to be shrunk, but by the time it gets detected, sometimes the growth rate is too large for the drug to combat. Some drugs attack different parts of the cell. If used in combination, the drugs might become more productive and save lives.
