This story, originally published at 4:18 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2023, was updated at 11:03 a.m. on Jan. 17 to use the correct pronoun for Simran Mattikalli.
Five Montgomery County Public Schools students conducting original research on Alzheimer’s disease, osteoporosis, mesh implants and other STEM topics were recognized this week as part of the nation’s next generation of talent in STEM—science, technology, engineering and math.
The Society for Science, a D.C.-based STEM nonprofit, announced its selection of 300 scholars in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, billed as the nation’s oldest and most prestigious high school science and math competition.
Selected scholars are awarded $2,000 each, and their schools are awarded $2,000 per student. The top 300 scholars are also invited to apply to Regeneron’s summer internship program.
The honorees from Montgomery County are:
- Jonathan Matthew Fan, 18, from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring. He submitted his research project titled, “A Genomic Meta-Data Analysis of Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases Reveals New Insights for Future Research.”
- Daniel Mathew, 17, from Poolesville High School. He was selected for his research, “MiniMesh: Real-Time 5,000-Node Anatomical Human Body Mesh Reconstruction for Portable Devices.”
- Simran Mattikalli, 17, from Winston Churchill High School in Potomac. Her research project was titled, “Deep Learning Segmentation of Hip Radiographs for Guiding Opportunistic Management of Osteoporotic Bone Fractures.”
- Milo Stammers, 18, from Poolesville High School. He submitted a research project titled, “On Elementary Generation of SL2 Over Integer Rings of Imaginary Function Fields.”
- Angela Yue Wu, 18, from Montgomery Blair High School. She was selected for her research project titled, “Calcium-Induced Mitochondrial Sorcin Aggregation: A Model System for Investigating Chaperone Suppression of Protein Aggregation.”
Each year more than 2,000 students across the United States, Guam, Puerto Rico and 10 other countries submit their original research to the in the hopes of being selected, according to a press release. The contest was started in 1942 and recognizes the nation’s promising young scientists and “provides students a national stage to present new ideas and challenge conventional ways of thinking,” the release said.
In the next few weeks, the judges from the Society for Science will examine scholar applications. Forty of the 300 scholars will be named finalists and win $25,000 to be used toward their education. The finalists will be announced on Jan. 24.
Finalists will also get the opportunity to spend a week in Washington, D.C. to meet and network with other finalists, display their work to the public and meet with notable scientists, experts and government leaders.
Finalists will also undergo a rigorous judging process to select the top 10 awards which range from $40,000 to $250,000 for first place. Winners will be announced on March 12 at a gala for the young scientists.

Wu, one of two Blair students, wrote in an email to MoCo360 that she was thrilled to learn that she was selected as a scholar.
“Getting this recognition for the hard work and effort I put into my research project is extremely exciting and encouraging for my future aspirations in the field,” she wrote.
Wu’s research focused on the Sorcin protein, specifically the form that is in the mitochondria of human cells. She explained that it is an important protein that helps regulate calcium levels within the cell and in turn, regulates many biological functions and processes in humans. Wu studied what factors affect molecules of Sorcin to misfold and aggregate when it binds to calcium which, according to Wu, is a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases.
“Mitochondrial Sorcin’s aggregation behavior helps us understand the aggregation of other proteins, and can help us tackle aggregation-related issues like neurodegenerative disease,” Wu wrote. “My experiment allowed me to mimic and adjust intracellular conditions like pH and temperature and even account for the presence of chaperone proteins. These discoveries could be used by biomedical researchers to develop new therapies that manipulate intracellular conditions to create an environment conducive to inhibiting aggregation, or that utilize chaperones to suppress aggregation.”
Wu, whose brother David was a fifth-place finalist in the 2018 Talent Search, told MoCo360 that she plans to put the $2,000 prize toward paying college expenses.
In the future, Wu hopes to continue doing biomedical research in biology, chemistry or both, and is especially interested in applications for treating cancer. She shared that her mom is a two-time neuroendocrine cancer survivor and is currently battling the disease for a third time.
Wu also sees her success as an opportunity to break down gender barriers, create a more inclusive and diverse scientific community and encourage girls to pursue STEM careers.
“As a young woman, it particularly means a lot to me; throughout history, there have been countless examples of women being denied the science and research opportunities that men have had,” she wrote. “I’m lucky enough to have grown up with a mom who’s been a huge role model — she has a background in both chemical engineering and statistics — and to work in a lab where there are just as many, if not more, females as males, but I know that there’s still a huge gap in the number of women in STEM compared to men.”