Brooklyn Girl Wins Third in Prestigious National Science Competition

March 14, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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Seventeen-year-old Stuyvesant High School senior Mimi Yen has walked away from the final round of the Intel Science Talent Search with third place honors and a $50,000 award, according to The New York Times SchoolBook blog.

The national research contest, which concluded Tuesday night in Washington, D.C., bills itself as “the oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition.” Yen’s original research project rose through three rounds of review from a pool of roughly 1,600 submissions before securing her a spot on the winners’ podium.

Her project was a “study of evolution and genetics, which focuses on microscopic worms, specifically looking at their sex habits and hermaphrodite tendencies,” according to a news release from the competition obtained by SchoolBook. The underlying goal of Yen’s research was to provide insight into the way genes interact with human behavior.

Yen, who was born in Honduras and lives in Williamsburg, joins the distinguished ranks of past finalists, a class whose credits include 11 Macarthur “Genius” Grants and seven Nobel Prizes.