After winning top honours in the Waterloo-Wellington Science fair at RIM Park in April, Conestogo’s Adam Martinez has won gold in a national competition.
His project explored ionic silver-resistant bacteria, and whether nanosilver could kill the bacteria that had evolved.
He presented his project in Montreal in May, and took home a gold medal for his hard work.
He says that he felt great when he learned that he won one of the top awards at the Canada-wide science fair.
“It works differently than the regional fair. In each category – junior, intermediate and senior – there are ten gold medals, 20 silver medals and 40 bronze, then they rank you and you get the [applicable] medal. I got the gold,” he said. “It felt good.”
He didn’t make many changes to his project between regionals and nationals, believing in his work.
“I added a couple bioinformatics things, just to prove my point a bit better, but nothing major,” he said.
The national science fair environment was a bit different than regionals in Waterloo, mainly because the judges were experts in microbiology, and they had a couple of weeks to review his project before the young scientists gathered in Montreal. He wasn’t intimidated.
“They had two weeks worth of questions and they are all in the field of microbiology so I did get some ideas,” he said of the feedback he received. “I did hear that some people found it intimidating, and others found it exciting. It depends on how well you know your stuff. If you know it, then there is nothing to be afraid of.”
Even though he won a gold medal at the recent competition, he isn’t guaranteed a spot on the international level.
“It is really iffy now, because Blackberry doesn’t fund the fair anymore. So, now the Americans are sponsoring the Canadian teams, so there is a selection process to get on team Canada. It is pretty rare that you get in. If you do well at nationals, they look at that,” he said. “The applications are in November, so I can continue to research a little bit and see how I do.”
For now, Martinez will be working on improving his project, and exploring the nano versus ionic silver challenge further, ahead of a possible next step.
