Hestina Park
AN 11th grade student at Saipan International School is the winner of a $10,000 scholarship to the University of Texas at Arlington and will also separately undergo an internship at the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Italy, according to SIS Headmaster Dr. Ronald Snyder.
Snyder said Hestina Park received the prestigious awards after taking part in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair or ISEF which took place from May 14 to 19 in Dallas, Texas.
Park was selected to be the CNMI’s representative after winning the research category of the local STEM fair earlier this year.
Park told Variety that in Texas, she presented research focused on “detecting coral bleaching using bioinformatic image structures by incorporating computer science.”
In total, she spent around six months collecting and interpreting data. Park said there were approximately 1,400 competitors from all around America participating alongside her. Although Park has not formally committed to any college after high school, the $10,000 scholarship essentially guarantees her a place at the University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Science.
When Park takes up her internship in Italy, she will be assisting in experiments using artificial intelligence to monitor air quality.
For Park, the rewards of science are primarily intrinsic. She said even without a competition or the awards, she would have been doing the research anyway.
“I just really wanted to start with research because I knew that research is going to be a thing in college,” Park said.
She calls the experience at ISEF one of the best weeks of her entire life, where she was able to not only win, but also be in the vicinity of symposiums and panel talks related to STEM.
For Park, it’s a yearlong journey in science come to fruition. She said as a child she memorized the periodic table for fun, which was the sign that science was her preferred field of study.
“What I really liked about science is that there’s one concrete answer,” Park said. “A single finding can change the world.”
