英特尔科学奖，年轻科学家的摇篮

A Laboratory Grows Young Scientists
By ETHAN HAUSER July 24, 2013
基础教育
英特尔科学奖，年轻科学家的摇篮
ETHAN HAUSER 2013年07月24日
OSSINING, N.Y. — During lunch hour, the hallways of Ossining High School have a kind of barely contained chaos. Whistles bleed from the gym, students squeeze every last minute of freedom before they’re due back in class. Even the library, where Dan McQuaid sat with two of his science teachers two weeks ago, buzzes and hums.
纽约州奥西宁——午餐时间，奥西宁高中(Ossining High School)的走廊里充斥着各种嘈杂声。体育馆中传来吹哨声，学生充分利用重返课堂前的每一分钟自由时间。即便是在两周前，当丹·麦克奎德(Dan McQuaid)和他的两位理科老师坐在图书馆中时，里面也是乱哄哄一片。
None of this hubbub drew even the tiniest acknowledgment from these three. Instead they were there to talk about Dan’s [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] research.
这种嘈杂并未分散他们三人任何哪怕是一丝一毫的注意力。相反，他们仍在专心讨论着丹所做的[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]研究。
A 17-year-old senior, Dan is one of [要查看本链接请先注册并登录]. The winner will be announced Tuesday night in Washington, and when a reporter asked Dan about the pressure, one of his teachers, Angelo Piccirillo, stepped in protectively.
现年17岁的丹是毕业班的一名学生，同时也是进入美国[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]之一。冠军将会于周二晚上在华盛顿揭晓，而当一名记者向丹提及压力问题时，他的老师之一安吉洛·皮奇里罗(Angelo Piccirillo)出于保护心理接过了话题。

Dan, he said, has already earned distinction enough: He is the first student from Ossining High ever to reach the finals. “It’s all gravy from now on,” Mr. Piccirillo added with a smile.
他说，丹已经赢得了足够的荣誉：他是奥西宁高中第一个闯入决赛的学生。“从现在开始，一切都是锦上添花了，”皮奇里罗笑着补充道。
That kind of gentle encouragement undoubtedly helped Dan advance to where he is. Yet this has hardly been a stress-free week for the Intel finalists, shortlisted from a group of 300 semifinalists. They have been in Washington since Wednesday and Thursday to present their projects to a judging panel and the public. The top 10 finalists will receive prizes of $20,000 to $100,000; the other 30 will receive $7,500.
这种温和的鼓励对丹取得今天的成绩无疑是有助益的。然而，对于参加此次英特尔赛事的决赛选手而言，这并非毫无压力的一周。这些决赛选手是从300名半决赛选手中脱颖而出的。他们自周三和周四以来就一直待在华盛顿，向评审小组和公众展示他们的项目。前10名决赛选手将会获得2万-10万美元不等的奖金，而其他30名则会获得7500美元的奖金。
And that may just be the beginning. If history is any indication, several of these young men and women will go on to greater fame: Since the science competition’s inception in 1942, as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, seven of its alumni have won [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] and 11 have received MacArthur “genius” awards.
而这或许只是一个开始。若历史可鉴，那么他们中的一些人还将会获得更大的声誉：自1942年设立该科学竞赛以来，时为“西屋科学英才选拔赛”(Westinghouse Science Talent Search)，共有7名选手获得了[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]，11名选手获得了麦克阿瑟“天才”奖。
The 40 finalists were culled from more than 1,700 applications, which are due in November. (The 2012 deadline was just days after [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] paralyzed much of the East Coast, and students affected by the storm got an extension.)
这40名选手是从超过1700名申请者中选拔出来的，该选拔赛的截止时间为去年11月。（在2012年截止日的前几天，美国东海岸很多地区都遭遇了[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]袭击，受此影响的学生获得延期。）
The competition is run by the Society for Science and the Public and is financed by the Intel Corporation, through its Intel Foundation. When Westinghouse ceased sponsorship 15 years ago, Intel took over, primarily “to change the conversation about young scientists in the U.S.,” said Wendy Hawkins, the foundation’s executive director.
该竞赛由科学与公众学会(Society for Science and the Public)举办，并由英特尔公司(Intel Corporation)通过其旗下的英特尔基金会(Intel Foundation)提供资金支持。15年前西屋公司(Westinghouse)停止赞助后，英特尔接手了该项赛事。英特尔基金会执行主任温迪·霍金斯(Wendy Hawkins)表示，赛事主要是为了“改变美国国内关于年轻科学家的会话”。
Instead of the “endless drivel” about stereotypes of scientists as geeks and absent-minded professors, Ms. Hawkins added, “we want to focus on celebrating and supporting the life-changing work these young scientists are doing and will do throughout their careers.”
霍金斯女士补充说，我们要关注的并不是“没完没了的胡言乱语”，即有关将科学家固化为极客和心不在焉的教授的谬论，而是“鼓励和支持这些年轻科学家现在所做的以及将来在其职业生涯中所从事的可改变人们生活的工作”。
One of Intel’s first changes was to significantly increase the prize money. “Money does attract attention,” Ms. Hawkins said. “We want students like these to be just as celebrated as are the star athletes and entertainers in their schools.”
英特尔首先所做的改变之一就是大幅提升奖金数额。“奖金的确会吸引注意力，”霍金斯说，“我们希望这样的学生能够同他们学校中的文体明星一样出名。”
In Washington, finalists are judged by scientists from universities across the country (this reporter’s late father was a judge), whose knowledge outside their fields is sometimes outstripped by many of the finalists.
在华盛顿，决赛选手将会接受来自全美各大学的科学家的评审（记者本人已过世的父亲曾担任过评委），而在这些科学家所涉学科之外的领域，很多选手所掌握的知识都超过了他们。
What the judges are looking for, however, is not limited to a project itself.
然而，这些评委所关注的并不仅仅是项目本身。
“Our goal is to find future leaders in science,” said the panel’s chairman, David Marker, a professor of mathematics, statistics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“我们的目标是寻找未来的科学领袖，”评审小组主席、伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校(University of Illinois at Chicago)的数学、统计学和计算机科学教授戴维·马克(David Marker)说。
In four 15-minute interviews with groups of three judges, finalists are not only asked about their projects but are also tested on basic science knowledge. For example, Dr. Marker said, they might be asked to “diagram a plant cell and explain the functions of some of the organelles.”
决赛选手将接受由3名评委组成的评审小组的4轮面试，每轮时间为15分钟，期间不仅会问到他们的项目，而且还会测试他们所掌握的基础科学知识。马克博士举例说，他们可能会被要求“用图解法表示植物细胞并对部分细胞器的功能进行解释”。
And then there are the questions that no one can prepare for: “One of my favorites from a former judge was ‘Tell me about the universe,’ ” Dr. Marker said. “Another might ask them to predict the future of the newspaper industry.” The idea is to get “some indication of how they think.”
然后，还有一些问题是根本不可能准备的。“先前一位评委的问题是‘讲一讲宇宙吧’，这是我最喜欢的问题之一，”马克博士说，“另外也可能会让他们预测一下报业的未来。”他说，通过这种方式，评委可以从侧面了解一下“他们的思维模式”。
Tuesday night’s announcement will close this particular chapter of these students’ lives, but this is a story with much to come. Here are four of the finalists and their projects.
对这些学生来说，周二晚上的获奖揭晓将意味着他们生命中一个特殊篇章的结束，但这是一个远未结束的故事。以下是其中的4名决赛选手及其项目。
Car Keys and Secure Keys
汽车钥匙与安全密钥
In many ways Mayuri Sridhar is like any other 17-year-old. One morning in late February, with patches of snow from the recent storm still dotting her hometown of Kings Park, N.Y., on Long Island, she was fretting over her driving test. “I’m worried about parallel parking,” she said.
在很多方面，马尤里·斯里达尔(Mayuri Sridhar)同其他17岁的孩子并没有什么区别。2月底的一个上午，在她的家乡纽约长岛的国王公园，最近降临的一场暴雪仍未融化，片片积雪随处可见。她正在为考驾照而苦恼。“我比较怵平行停车，”她说。
But in other ways, she could hardly be more different. In her bag, she carries a SecurID device, which allows her to connect her laptop with Kraken, a supercomputer at the University of Tennessee that can run millions of simulations.
但在另外一些方面，她就显得卓尔不群了。在她的包里有一个SecurID设备；利用这一设备，她可以把她的笔记本电脑同田纳西大学(University of Tennessee)可执行数百万次模拟运行的超级计算机“海怪”(Kraken)连在一起。
Working at the lab at Stony Brook University, under the mentorship of Dr. Carlos Simmerling, a chemistry professor, Mayuri looked at a protein that plays an important role in tumor suppression. (The precise title of her project is “Computational Analysis of the DNA-Binding Mechanism of the p53 Tumor Suppressor and Its Inactivation Through the R249S Mutation.” See: not your typical teenager.)
在化学教授卡洛斯·希姆林(Carlos Simmerling)博士的指导下，马尤里在石溪大学(Stony Brook University)的实验室参与了一项有关蛋白质的研究，该蛋白质在肿瘤抑制方面发挥着重要作用。（她参与的项目的准确名称是“肿瘤抑制因子p53的DNA结合机制及通过R249S突变将其失活的计算分析”。看到了吧，这可不是一般的青少年。）
She found that the mutation of a single amino acid causes enough structural changes in the p53 protein that it can no longer bind to DNA — and hence cannot act as a tumor suppressor. Through sophisticated computer modeling she discovered that it wasn’t “energy constraints” that were preventing the protein from doing its job but basic structural changes that meant these two shapes could no longer fit together as puzzle pieces should.
她发现，一个氨基酸的突变足以导致p53蛋白质的结构变化，并使其不再与DNA结合，因而也就无法发挥肿瘤抑制因子的作用。通过先进的计算机建模技术，她发现阻止该蛋白质发挥这一作用的并不是“能量限制”，而是基本结构的变化导致两者形状无法再像拼图一样组合在一起。
Born in Singapore to parents from India, Mayuri is part of an explosion in Intel entrants who are immigrants or children of immigrants. She is also doing her part to cloud the debate over nature versus nurture: her sister, Hamsa, was a finalist in 2008.
马尤里出生在新加坡，父母是印度人；在英特尔科学奖中，她是数量激增的移民或移民子女参赛选手中的一员。同时，她的事例也进一步引发了有关先天遗传和后天培养的辩论：她的姐姐哈姆萨(Hamsa)是2008年的决赛选手。
Microscopic View
微观视角
For many years, there were always two New York City schools disproportionately represented among Intel Science Talent Search winners: Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science. That dominance came both from their science-focused curriculums and from well-established programs that groomed students from an early age for competitions like Intel.
多年来，在英特尔科学奖的获胜者中，纽约市的两所中学一直独占鳌头：史岱文森高中(Stuyvesant)和布朗克斯科学高中(Bronx High School of Science)。这种优势，一方面是因为学校对理科课程的重视，另一方面也是因为学校有着良好的计划，自一开始注重培养学生参加英特尔科学奖等竞赛的能力。
Jonathan Gastel, a science teacher and the research coordinator at Stuyvesant, thinks the benefits of such programs are much bigger than accruing prizes. Students might not see science as a viable career path, he said: “They might think a scientist is someone in a lab with frizzy hair. They might be misled about what a scientist is, which is a person determined to solve an important problem in the world.”
史岱文森高中理科教师、研究协调员乔纳森·加斯特尔(Jonathan Gastel)认为，这些计划的好处远远不仅限于获奖。他说，学生可能不会将科学视为一条可行的职业路径，“他们可能会认为科学家就是实验室里那些蓬头垢面的人。他们可能对科学家存在误解，不知道他们是致力于解决世界重大问题的人。”
His zeal helped persuade Jamie Lee Solimano, 17, to find one of those problems to unravel. Unlike many of her fellow finalists, she had never entered a science competition before. The daughter of an artist, Jamie was raised in Manhattan. For her Intel project, she examined cellular signaling.
在他的热忱鼓励下，17岁的杰米·李·索利马诺(Jamie Lee Solimano)就找到了这样一个重大问题。同其他很多决赛选手不同的是，她先前从未参加过科学竞赛。杰米是一位艺术家的女儿，在曼哈顿长大。她此次的参赛项目是细胞信号研究。
Jamie said her interest took root during a summer program at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where James Watson (of Watson and Crick fame) did much of his research. At Stuyvesant she continued to explore what she describes as “how interdisciplinary science can be.”
杰米说，她的兴趣源于冷泉港实验室(Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)，詹姆斯·沃森（James Watson，与弗朗西斯·克里克[Francis Crick]因发现DNA双螺旋结构共获诺贝尔奖）的大部分研究就是在该实验室进行的。在史岱文森高中，她继续研究她所说的这门“交叉学科”。
At a lab at Columbia, she was able to look at what happens when a cell’s primary cilium — a hairlike organelle that projects from the cell su***ce — is disrupted by a foreign agent. (She treated cell lines with lithium, which caused the cilia to grow longer.)
在哥伦比亚大学(Columbia)的一个实验室，她观察到了细胞初级纤毛——细胞表面突出的类似于毛发的细胞器——在受外界作用物干扰时所发生的情况。（她利用锂对细胞系进行培养，从而使得纤毛长得更长。）
She discovered that foreign molecules can alter how proteins are organized in the cilia, which can impair signaling function. Her research, possible only through the use of a super-resolution microscope, has implications for diagnosing and preventing [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] and genetic defects.
她发现外界分子可以改变纤毛中蛋白质的组织形式，进而削弱细胞的信号功能。她的研究——只能借助超高分辨率显微镜进行——对诊断和预防[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]和遗传缺陷会有所启示。
“One of the biggest challenges of explaining molecular biology to a public audience,” she said at her lab at Columbia, “is getting people to understand something they can’t see and interact with.”
“在向公众解释分子生物学时，最大的挑战之一就是让人们理解他们看不到也摸不到的东西，”她在哥伦比亚大学的实验室里说。
Over the Moon
登月
Perched on a hill in Westchester County, Ossining High School is a commanding building with a view of a sliver of the Hudson River to the west. Not that its students spend hours getting lost in the languorous scenery — they are too busy with homework and sports, with navigating social cliques and worrying about college.
奥西宁高中坐落在韦斯切斯特郡的一座山上，校舍居高临下，西侧的哈德逊河尽收眼底。但学生并未因安逸闲适的校园环境而迷失自我，他们忙于功课和体育活动，同时还要从事社交，为升学焦虑。
Or if they are Dan McQuaid, with “Identification of Post-Translational Regulation Sites on the KLF6 Tumor Suppressor as Novel Targets for Cancer Therapies.”
或者，像丹·麦克奎德一样，忙于“作为癌症治疗新靶标的KLF6肿瘤抑制因子转录后调控部位的鉴别”。
Like Stuyvesant, Ossining has a dedicated research program, which students enter in the 10th grade. That program has produced 45 Intel semifinalists since 2001; its total of eight in 2010 was the highest of any school that year. None of them made it to the finals. “Dan’s a sort of Neil Armstrong,” said his adviser Mr. Piccirillo. “We’ve never been to the moon before.”
同史岱文森高中一样，奥西宁高中也有一个专门的研究计划，针对的是十年级的学生。自2001年设立以来，该计划已经为英特尔科学奖输送了45名半决赛选手，其中2010年有8名之多，超过当年全美其他所有学校。但他们中无一人进入决赛。“丹有点像尼尔·阿姆斯特朗(Neil Armstrong)，”他的指导老师皮奇里罗说，“我们先前从未登上过月球。”
The program, said Valerie Holmes, one of its teachers, encourages students to find a subject with which they have a personal connection. For Dan, that was medical research: He lost a cousin to [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] during his freshman year.
据该计划的老师瓦莱丽·霍姆斯(Valerie Holmes)表示，计划旨在鼓励学生寻找与其个人相关的项目。对丹来说，这就是医学研究：在上高中一年级时，他的一个堂兄死于[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]。
KLF6, a protein, acts as a tumor suppressor in a lot of cancers, he said, yet “there’s so little of it.” Wanting to know why, he joined a lab at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where graduate students and faculty members were working on identifying the factors behind the protein’s degradation. Part of what the research program teaches students, Ms. Holmes said, is tenacity; Dan and his advisers approached 30 to 40 potential mentors before finding one who would take him on.
他说，KLF6是一种蛋白质，在很多癌症中发挥着肿瘤抑制因子的作用，但“它的数量太少了”。为找出原因，他加入了曼哈顿的西奈山医院(Mount Sinai Hospital)的实验室；在那里，研究生和医院工作人员正忙于确定导致该蛋白质降解的因素。霍姆斯说，该计划也会培养学生的韧性；丹和他的指导老师在接触了三四十名潜在的导师之后，才最终找到一位可以带他的人。
Asked what he was looking forward to most about heading to Washington, Dan blurted out, “Meeting Obama.” (Intel finalists often get an audience with the president.) When Ms. Holmes offered that, depending on world events, he might have to settle for the vice president, he allowed that that would be all right, too.
在被问及前往华盛顿最期望什么时，丹脱口而出，说“见奥巴马(Obama)”。（英特尔科学奖的决赛选手通常都会受到总统接见。）当霍姆斯女士告诉他说，这将取决于世界大事，他或许只能见到副总统时，丹说那也不错。
Making an Impact
有影响的创造
Many Intel finalists log long hours in sophisticated labs attached to universities and research centers where they must wade gingerly so as not to upset fragile experiments (and egos). Others, like Catherine Wong, 17, of Morristown, N.J., spend a lot of time in their schools’ modest classrooms and at home, where she “got to break a lot of stuff.” From those missteps emerged a prototype for a wireless device that can produce a digitized electrocardiograph and transmit the results from remote locations to doctors via cellphone.
英特尔科学奖的很多决赛选手都会长时间待在大学或研究中心的高端实验室；在那里，他们必须要小心谨慎，以免影响到“脆弱”的实验（以及脆弱的自尊心）。而其他一些人，则将大部分时间花在学校教室里和家中，比如说来自新泽西州莫里斯敦、17岁的王安怡(Catherine Wong)；她说自己“弄坏了很多东西”。而也正是因为这些错误，让她发明了一种无线电设备，可制作数字化心电图并通过手机将结果远程传送给医生。
Catherine, who goes to Morristown High School, became interested in telemedicine after viewing the exhibit “[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]” at the Cooper-Hewitt museum in Manhattan, which highlighted devices aimed at helping people in the developing world. There are far more cellphones than toilets in third-world countries, she points out.
王安怡在莫里斯敦高中(Morristown High School)读书，她曾去曼哈顿的库珀-休伊特(Cooper-Hewitt)博物馆参观了“[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]”（Design for the Other 90 Percent，该展览主要展示可帮助发展中世界人们的设备），因此对远程医学产生了兴趣。她指出，在第三世界国家，手机比厕所要多得多。
From there she taught herself cellphone software coding and electrical engineering techniques, using “breadboards” and a soldering iron. “Engineering is the field that worships impact,” she said of her choice to enter it, “and to have the greatest impact, it has to be in the developing world.”
从那时起，她开始自学手机软件编码和电机工程技术，使用的是“实验电路板”和烙铁。“工程学有着重大的影响，”她讲她为什么要进入这一领域时说，“而最大的影响，莫过于对发展中世界的影响。”
Catherine is something of an outlier among this year’s Intel semifinalists and finalists: 82 percent of the engineering projects were submitted by boys. (Conversely, plant science skews overwhelmingly female — 80 percent.)
在今年英特尔选拔赛的半决赛选手和决赛选手中，王安怡可以说是一个“异类”：82%的工程学项目都是由男生提交的。（与之相对的是，植物科学项目的提交者中，女生占了压倒性的多数，达到80%。）
The larger picture is good news for anyone worried about gender equality in the sciences. In 8 of the last 10 years, 40 percent to 50 percent of finalists were girls.
总体来看，对于那些担心科学领域出现性别失衡的人来说，这是一个好消息。在过去的10年里，有8年进入决赛的女生人数达到40%-50%。
Catherine has applied for a provisional patent for her prototype. Not that she will be doing much sitting around and waiting: she is currently teaching herself about retinal photography, another area that has potential impact in the developing world because such imaging can also be used telemedically to help diagnose [要查看本链接请先注册并登录].
王安怡已经为她的样机申请了临时专利。但她并未因此就止步不前：目前，她正在自学视网膜摄影术，这也是对发展中世界有着潜在影响的一个领域，因为这种成像术可以通过远程医疗来帮助诊断[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]。
“Inspiring” is a word often used about the Intel Science Talent Search. Dr. Andrew Yeager, a professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, who retired as judging chairman last year, said that it “was one of the most inspiring and rewarding activities in which I have been involved.” The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote in 2010 that attending the awards dinner “was the most inspiring evening” he had had in Washington in 20 years.
“鼓舞人心”是经常被用来形容英特尔科学奖的一个词。去年退休的评审小组主席、亚利桑那大学医学院(University of Arizona College of Medicine)教授安德鲁·耶格尔(Andrew Yeager)博士说，这是“我所参加的最鼓舞人心也是最有意义的活动之一”。《纽约时报》专栏作家托马斯·L·弗里德曼(Thomas L. Friedman)在2010时曾写道，颁奖宴会的当晚是他在华盛顿20年来所经历的“最鼓舞人心的一个夜晚”。
But even those who don’t come to know these young men and women through their ravenous intellects, or find in their ethnic diversity overwhelming evidence of the upsides of open-immigration policies, are often moved by their stories. Samantha Garvey, a semifinalist last year from Long Island, [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] when she learned of her honor.
即便是那些不了解这些年轻选手卓越才能的人，以及那些没有看到这些选手种族多样性的人（这显然是开放的移民政策的积极意义所在），也经常会为他们的故事所感动。去年闯入半决赛的选手、来自长岛的萨曼莎·加维(Samantha Garvey)就是[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]收到进入半决赛的消息的。
And one of this year’s finalists, Lane Gunderman, a student at the University of Chicago Lab School, said his interest in photosynthesis developed “as my science courses explained its importance in the grand scheme of life.” He knows something about life’s grand schemes: just six years ago [要查看本链接请先注册并登录].
而今年的决赛选手、来自芝加哥大学附属实验中学(University of Chicago Lab School)的莱恩·冈德尔曼(Lane Gunderman)则表示，他对光合作用的兴趣是因为“书上说它对生命的宏伟计划很重要”。对于生命的宏伟计划，他多少是有一些了解的：在六年前，[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]。
Last week, he boarded a plane for the first time ever. On Tuesday, he will join the other finalists at a gala at the National Building Museum There they will discover something not even those with the gaudiest test scores and the most restive minds could tell you: what happens next.
上周，他生平第一次坐上了飞机。周二，他将与其他决赛选手一起参加在国家建筑博物馆(National Building Museum)举行的一场盛宴。在那里，他们不仅会看到那些获得最高分的项目成果，而且还会听到那些最不安分的头脑所讲述的未来。