Go, Wen, Go!

From http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_tams_0130.18507e59.html

TAMS student advances in contest

08:30 AM CST on Friday, January 30, 2009
By Britney Tabor / Staff Writer

(see my earlier post here)

ALSO ONLINE Scholarship awarded to Chyan

Intel Corp. this week chose Wen Chyan, a student at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science at the University of North Texas, as one of 40 finalists nationwide for its Science Talent Search.

Wen Chyan Competing for the top prize — a $100,000 college scholarship — the second-year student is the lone finalist from Texas invited to Washington, D.C., in March to present a project he’s re­searched that may help hospital patients avoid bacterial infections resulting from treatment.

Annually, infections af­fect more than 2 million hospital patients and kill about 100,000, officials say. Chyan, 17, said he’s developed a polymer coat­ing for medical de­vices that he believes could help prevent those infections.

The 40 national finalists hail from 17 states and 35 schools. Intel reports that within the last 67 years, seven Science Talent Search finalists have gone on to win prestigious awards such as the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal, the National Medal of Science and the MacArthur Foun­dation Fellowship.

In December, Chyan’s project earned him the grand prize and a $100,000 scholarship in the country’s premier high school research contest, the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Tech­nology.