JDCHS student recognized at international science fair

Courtesy photo

+ Enlarge

Juan Diego Catholic High School senior Arianna Vazquez is shown with her experiment at the 2024 University of Utah Science Fair, where she placed first in the Earth and Environmental Science division and was selected to attend the Genius Olympiad.

DRAPER – A yearlong research project undertaken for a class in her junior year at Juan Diego Catholic High School ultimately led Arianna Vazquez to the 2024 Genius Olympiad, a five-day event at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

The Genius Olympiad, founded in 2011 and organized by Terra Science and Education, is an “international high school project competition about environmental issues,” according to the website geniusolympiad.org. The event “hosts projects in five general disciplines with an environmental focus,” the website adds.

Vazquez was one of seven Utah students to attend the international event, and she received honorable mention for her project, “Exploring the Impact of Wildfires on Algae Growth and Organic Carbon in Utah Lake.” She qualified for the Genius Olympiad by placing first in the Earth and Environmental Science division at this year’s University of Utah Science and Engineering Fair.

The seeds for Vazquez’s project were planted in her sophomore year, when she attended a “Fire & Water in the West” presentation given at her school by Dr. Ben Abbott, an associate professor of Plant & Wildlife Sciences at Brigham Young University in Provo. Abbott spoke about climate change along the Wasatch Front and its impact on the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake.

Abbott’s presentation “kind of just stuck with me,” Vazquez said, and the next year she enrolled in her school’s AP Research class, which required her to do original research on a topic.

For the yearlong class, students develop their research questions and methods, select a hypothesis, then do original research and write up their results, said Dr. Christine Celestino, head of JDCHS’ Academy of Science. The students then write a 5,000-word paper and make a 20-minute presentation.

Doing original research is key to the AP Research class, Celestino said. “They can’t just read about what other people have done and write about it; they have to make an original, new contribution to the area that they are studying.”

For her research, Vazquez contacted Abbott and asked to work with him, focusing her efforts on the effects of wildfires in Utah Lake, where the water was “toxic last year” because of an algae bloom, Vazquez said.

Although this year’s event at the University of Utah was the first science fair Vazquez ever participated in, “I just love research and I’ve never been able to have the opportunity to be assisted and guided through a research project like AP Research provides,” she said.

As part of her research, she led a team of university graduate students in collecting 50 water samples from different streams and watersheds around Utah Lake. She then analyzed these samples, learning to use specialized equipment in different labs at BYU to test the water samples to determine the recovery rate of organic carbon in the water, she said.

Organic carbon becomes reactive after a wildfire and begins to decompose other elements in the water, releasing chemicals like nitrogen phosphorous, “and that’s what causes these algae blooms,” she said.

“I learned a lot,” she said. “I went into it just knowing about algae blooms and that they were toxic and bad for the environment, but I learned so much,” not only how to use the different analytical equipment but also “how important it is that we know recovery rates after things like a wildfire, ’cause when all of that runoff goes in, it takes quite some time for it to recover.”

If the conditions are too bad, the water can’t be used for drinking purposes, she said.

 Participating in the Genius Olympiad “was one of the coolest things I had ever done,” she said, particularly because “I got to meet so many different people and learn so much about other countries and their lives.”

Also, “These judges were so interested in what I had to say, and they had so many good questions that made me rethink my research,” she said.

“I think I matured a lot; it kind of broadened my perspective on the whole world and research,” she added, noting that “it’s so cool” to see that there are “people in far-away countries who have the same concerns” about things like algae blooms.

Vazquez is the second JDCHS student to attend the Genius Olympiad; others have qualified for the International Science Fair. Both events are quite prestigious events, Celestino said.

“I think [Vazquez] stands out from past students we’ve had who’ve gone on to further competition in how she came up with her project and followed through with it,” Celestino said, explaining that while other JDCHS students work in a university lab, their work is directed, whereas Vazquez “drove the research and she found what she wanted to do and got the training she needed to do it, which is much more student-driven than we usually see in our science-fair kids.”

That initiative and curiosity “makes for a really good scientist,” Celestino  said, and to “find a way to fill a gap in the existing research is what makes for a natural researcher.”