March 2025 Newsletter: It's Go Time
Isavella's Newsletter
Picking up the pace
This month, I had a lot on the go and just a lot to do. I had projects from science fair, to my focus, to getting the challenge done on time. But, it’s all a part of the experience, and I enjoyed a lot of it. But, I found that some of that stuff I was feeling procrastination on, and that did affect my performance. For the challenge, my entire group procrastination, and then we needed to scramble the week before to finish it (even worse, 2/3 of my team members couldn’t work, so I had to scramble). But, I think that it was just a period where, even though so much is going on, I still felt procrastination and a little demotivation. But, after this month and after making progress on a lot of things I’m passionate about, I feel much better to tackle the next challenges and projects that come up!
Who Am I?
I’m Isavella, an ambitious and driven 14-year-old who has recently been accepted into TKS (The Knowledge Society), and I want to share my experience with all of you! Throughout these monthly newsletters, you will see some of my accomplishments and downfalls, not to mention other things going on in my life. Not everything comes easy, and I won’t make it look easy.
This Month I…
Conducted Trial 2 of Phage Stability Experiments at a Lab at Mount Royal University (MRU)
Last month, we did our first trial run of phage stability tests at MRU, but there were a few flaws in our experiment. Still, we presented at the school science fair and were able to make it into the city-wide science fair! So, we wanted to have concrete data to present at cities, and also we wanted to actually run the experiment successfully and get the results we were looking for. So, we were able to go back to the lab and work with a Master’s student, James La, who was familiar with working with phages in the lab and how to run specific procedures for them.
So, we re-ran our phage stability experiments, and we were able to gather results and see what we were looking for.
Then, we compiled the data and, with the help of James La, created 2 graphs to showcase our results and findings.
It was such a great experience to get to go back and redo the procedure properly and actually gather the results we wanted to see, and I would love to go back sometime and run some more experiments.
The city-wide science fair is in April, so our goal is to do well in that competition to make it to Nationals. Nationals will give us the opportunity to compete for awesome prizes, showcase our work at a higher level, and network with awesome youth and experts working in STEM. It’s a great opportunity, and we are aiming for it! To see our entire project platform, you can go here.
Submitted our Samsung x TKS Challenge Deck
This challenge wasn’t our best one, especially compared to the results we had in the IKEA one. We had the problem of procrastination/burnout. And, when we planned to actually work on the deck and have something submitted on time, 2/3 of my group members weren’t able to work. So, I worked to put a deck together and have something to submit in about a week. It wasn’t a smart decision, but at least we were able to say we completed the second challenge and that we explored a new sector. The Samsung challenge prompt was:
How can Samsung leverage AI to redefine how people interact with their products, with a focus on accommodating people with diverse needs?
We struggled a lot with ideation in the challenge because it was a little more restricted/technical compared to our first one. Also, we felt that the 4 weeks made us not put pressure on ourselves to try and complete something in time, but really we just weren’t feeling the motivation for this challenge at all.
But, after this setback with the challenge, I’m feeling ready and better than ever to go head-on with the upcoming project in TKS, moonshots! Moonshots is where you are led fully by your curiosity and follow the framework by the company X, The Moonshot Factory, to create your own solution to a problem in the world that you are passionate about. It’s like you are the founder of your own company, and I’m looking forward to this project and know that whoever I team up with and I will do great!
Made More Progress on my Phage CRISPR-Cas3 Delivery System
I’ve finally been able to get into all the interesting work with my focus! I’ve been developing a CRISPR-Cas3 system that will be able to suppress the essential genes of E. coli CFT073, which will be delivered to the bacterium via a phage delivery system.
I was stuck for a bit when building this because the CRISPR-Cas3 system isn’t normally provided/used with most biological software tools. So, when determining the gRNAs I will be using to be associated with each gene (the guide RNA or gRNA guides the Cas3 system to where in the genome it needs to make the cut/modification), I had to create my own code that would evaluate all the possible gRNA sequences and rank them to find the best one. It was difficult because the ranking system wasn’t working properly, and it took a lot of trial and error until I finally got it to work and give me results. So, now that this part of the project is out of the way, I can finally start to put this thing together and see it become a reality, which I’m really excited to continue developing!
Published the Video for my Paper on Genetically Engineering Phages
This took a lot of time to film, mainly due to finding the time as well as the motivation, but my video on the paper I wrote for genetically engineering phages is out, and only five minutes long! You can watch it here for a short rundown on my paper and the importance of researching this topic.
Growth
I had the period in this month where I was feeling procrastination and demotivation, and I tink my growth came from being able to, instead of hit pause on everything, filter out all the stuff I found tedious and instead really focus one what I found interesting, which is my focus project and the lab work for science fair. And, it paid off in those areas because I made it to city-wide for science fair while learning so much (we also were able to put together something really strong for science fair, so I think we have a great chance for Nationals!), and I also made really big progress on my focus so I could move on to the next steps and start putting things together. I think I learned that I need to see it through when I’m really passionate about something, because every project has its ups and downs, and my motivation levels do as well. But, I think I got a good reset after the challenge and am ready to take on the Moonshot project and do well!
Shout-Out!
Shoutout to my science fair partner for agreeing to do this project with me and putting in the effort so we can get to Nationals!
A big shoutout to James La for conducting this experiment with us further and taking the time to help us do it properly and get the results we were looking for. We could not have done all this without your help!
In Other News…
I won my fight, which I’m super happy about! I really wanted to win this, and I did. Now, I have my eyes set on that belt in Iowa in June. So, you bet I’ll be coming home with that one as well!
Credit: sweetsarah_yyc
What’s Next?
For this month, I’m looking to make big progress on my focus and try to finish this project. I am also focusing on the city-wide science fair taking place this week, because my goal is to make it to Nationals. Moonshots is also starting soon, so I want to really do well in that and make a great project out of this. I am also slowly picking up the pace in training again for the tournament in Iowa in June, so I can bring home that belt! There’s a lot on the go, but it’s so exciting!