Lake Fong, Post-Gazette
	Dr. Heinrich Kolem, President and CEO of Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., takes note on a project by Jinji Yu and Vijay Jain in the Siemens Math: Science: Technology Competition at Carnegie Mellon University yesterday.

With detailed explanations and effervescent passion, these students explain their research with an air that's easily understood.

Fifteen high school students from New York and Maryland -- none from Pennsylvania -- will compete today at Carnegie Mellon University for the Middle States Regional Finals of the annual Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology.

These science projects are not volcanoes spewing fake lava.

Tom McCausland, chairman of the Siemans Foundation, said the research is graduate level. They include HIV research, nano-sized fibers that deliver drugs more efficiently, a new way to determine relationships between genes, and a novel way to kill cancer, among others.

Mr. McCausland said the Siemans Foundation has held the competition for eight years to counter a "downturn in the number of high school graduates going into science and engineering.

"We're trying to create science heroes, like high school sports does, that will pull other kids along and show them it's cool to be involved in math and science," he said.

Victoria Yao, 17, of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md., has developed a way to identify genes in cells and better understand cancer. She did the research with a mentor at the National Institutes of Health.

"It involved a lot of troubleshooting," said Miss Yao, who spent the summer in a laboratory. "Nobody has done this before, so there's no method to follow."

Doing the research was "suspenseful," but results were worth it. "You can use my method to see what a chromosome looks like inside the nucleus," she said.

Maxinder Soni, 16, of the Wheatley School in Old Westbury, N.Y., and Bowei "Sharon" Ji, 16, of Jericho Senior High School in Jericho, N.Y., teamed up to create a fibrous polymer that can deliver drugs inside the body.

Only nanometers wide, the fibers have porous shells that cover dissolvable polymers saturated with Lidocaine. The fibers can release the anesthetic at specific times and dose rates.

"We're hoping our profiles can be used by drug companies to produce drugs," Mr. Soni said. "We worked hard, but this is very prestigious to be here. It proves to us we were able to do a lot. It's a morale boost."

Identical twins Chris and Ken Winter, 17, of Ware Melville High School in East Setauket, N.Y., said they have a fresh approach to treating cancer.

Their method links biotin, which cancer cells need to survive, with a toxin. Once the cancer cell takes in the biotin, the link dissolves and releases the toxin.

The Winter brothers continue working out details but expressed hopes their research can be "the next big cancer treatment." The two said they're strongly considering attending CMU.

Individual and team winners of the competition will be announced this evening.

The winning team will receive $6,000 and the individual winner will receive $3,000, then head to New York City to compete Dec. 2-4 with other regional winners for $100,000 grand prizes.

Last year's individual $100,000 winner, Michael Viscardi of San Diego, solved the Dirichlet Problem, a mathematical problem formulated in the 19th century. Two Arizona students who won the team competition developed software that more accurately analyzes genetic data.

Elizabeth Jones, head of CMU's Biological Science Department, will lead the team of judges, who will question the students on their level of understanding and whether they or their mentors did most of the work. To reach this level, she said, students must be well versed in science and math.

"Sometimes you get such creativity, it's astonishing," Dr. Jones said. "It's easy to forget how young they are."