Junior earns 3rd at national poster competition

Collin Chan ’25 presented his work, “Fusion Pro: A Recurrent Neural Network-Based Program to Accelerate Construction of Fusion Proteins Toward Drug Discovery," to an audience of military researchers, generals, and his peers at this year’s National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium., the premier showcase for science, technology, engineering, and math research by high school students.

The symposium is sponsored by the Department of Defense and administered by the National Science Teaching Association. This year’s event was hosted by the Department of the U.S. Army and took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Wednesday, May 1 through Saturday, May 4. In attendance were 241 competing high school students as well as teachers, mentors, university faculty, military personnel, DoD STEM professionals, and more serving as judges, mentors, and representatives of their region.

Even getting this far is a testament to the hard work done by Colin, who made it to nationals by winning first prize in the state-level competition earlier this year.

“Only 241 kids across the country get to compete at the national level, so to be able to go and then do well means a lot to me,” he said, adding he will encourage more students at USN to participate in the competition at the state level and beyond.