Next Step, Nobel Prize?

Spencer Stevens

The Intel Science Talent Search is America’s most renowned pre-college competition. Students submit original research, which is accepted and evaluated by a jury of professional scientists. This competition acknowledges 300 student semifinalists each year. Among this year’s list of student geniuses you can find a familiar name – Lillian Xu.

The Western senior applied to the elite competition with her own original work, and it was far from the classic paper mache volcano. The title is “Cytotoxic Concentration of Gingerol is Inversely Related to Cell Division Rate: Ginger as a Chemopreventive Agent for Glioblastoma, Ovarian, Breast, and Colon Cancers.” I know this is a tongue twister, but it’s not as complicated as it sounds. According to Lillian, it’s basically a project based on ginger and how it can kill cancer cells.

However, the Intel STS award wasn’t always on Lillian’s mind. In fact, mainly because of all of the work involved, it wasn’t really a goal of hers until last year. She had to submit a 20 page research paper, write 7 essays, and include 3 teacher recommendations in her application. Lillian compared the process to applying for college. Thankfully, she had completed a lot of this work when she entered the same project into other local science fairs. In total, her project took about a week, “mostly because of my procrastination,” she said with a laugh. It was stressful, but she’s glad she made the decision to apply.

She actually received the news that she was a semifinalist when she was in school; it was around lunchtime when she saw the Intel announcement. “I wasn’t expecting to win, so when I saw my name on the list I was in complete shock,” said Xu.

Aside from the fact that she’s a semifinalist, Lillian’s glad she gets to represent the school. Being the only student semifinalist at Western, she feels really great to be representing a school that doesn’t specialize in science. Something she’s learned throughout her experience is, “You don’t have to go to an elite private school to do well. I’m just glad to have gotten so far, and I’m happy to be doing what I love.”

Lillian actually knew a lot of the semifinalists, “My favorite part of the whole thing was interacting with friends that also enjoy the same interests as me – it strengthens what I believe in!” She was extremely humble about the whole experience. She said, “ I just enjoy the internal satisfaction, that voice in my head telling me, ‘You did it!’”.