Biotech Club plans to host first science fair

On Nov. 16, Aragon’s Biotechnology Club will be hosting the school’s first science fair. The event is called the Health Design Competition and has been a work in progress since the fall of 2021.

President and founder of the Biotech Club, Zachary Zane, began the journey of starting the school’s first science fair.

“Last year, I came up with this plan in roughly December over the break,” Zane said. “I wanted to have a science fair that [Aragon] could actually talk about because never before has it had a science fair.

Zane developed the idea of the fair when he was participating in an anesthesiology internship at Stanford University during the summer.

“[The interns] didn’t all have to be great at coding, biology or chemistry,” Zane said. “We just had different skills that we were able to offer whether [it be creativity] in telling the story of the patient or visual design. We all had something to offer and I feel like that inclusivity is something that I wanted at Aragon.”

The plan for the Aragon Health Design Competition is different from the average one. Students did not choose their own themes, but instead received an objective to help people fighting against diseases with biotechnology.

“[We want to] create real solutions to real-life problems,” said Biotech Club vice president Grace Wu. “Although … our end products might not be completely made yet, we want to put in a step of innovation coming from our students.”

Ten groups were selected, each having an anonymous person to work with and disease to fight against. 

“I don’t like to call them patients because in reality, they’re people going through an experience, a disease, a challenge,” Zane said. “When you call them a patient, for example if I call someone a diabetes patient, that’s taking their whole identity away from them. That’s defining them by their challenge and their disease.”

The individuals, who are friends, family members or teachers willing to share their stories, were chosen personally by Zane, who has worked with them to communicate their needs to the students. Each group received a letter written by someone who has a specific disease so they can use the information to help others who suffer from the same condition.

Biotech Club adviser Kevin Doyle supports the work students in the club are doing. 

“There is a need in the community for this and they’re getting that by talking to actual people who suffer from conditions that affect their life,” Doyle said.

Sign-ups for the science fair opened Aug. 13, and roughly a hundred students joined. The fair is planned to take place on Nov. 16.

“We [will] have a panel of judges who are experts in the area, one of them being Dr. Currie, who I work under at the Stanford cardiothoracic surgery lab, and another one being … Mrs. Cho, who works at Verily, … [a company focused on] health design,” Zane said. “They have a lot of experience working with medical devices and understanding how to grade them.”

Students are already coming up with new ideas and building off of other designs. 

“We’re going to do empathy activities where we try to put ourselves in the shoes of the patient,” said sophomore Marco Strassia. “Then we are going to do some modeling and prototyping. Right now, we’re having meetings where we share ideas and write [them] down.”

The sentiment of patient-focused thinking is shared by other participants as well.

“I think it’s a process of … working with people,” said sophomore and Biotech Club treasurer Medha Rakesh. “Since this is our first science fair, I’d like to see how it turns out and if we can do it again in the future.”

The aforementioned judges will be looking at each group’s work and scoring each team’s project to determine the top three teams.

“I’m most excited for the final presentation,” Strassia said. “Presenting to the judges is [going to] be really fun. The prototyping aspect of it is [also] something that I’m really looking forward to.”

Zane has big plans for the future of the science fair.

“We have to plant the seeds … in order to give people in the future the same experience and to make them feel like they’re capable of making a change,” Zane said.

The sign-ups for this year’s science fair have already closed, but everyone is welcome to attend the science fair when the dates are announced. If aligned with Zane and the other board members’ hopes, the fair will come back next year, so students will have another opportunity to experience hands-on scientific design.