Junior Miao, teacher Nodado win Student, Educator of the Month

By Isabelle Chiu

Sports Editor

Typically, Staples Center’s basketball court is used for athletics, but on March 28, Mira Costa junior Jennifer Miao and biology and chemistry teacher Ernesto Nodado scored awards for their respective outstanding work in the field of science.

Miao and Nodado won the Student and Educator of the Month of March contest, presented by the hospital City of Hope. Teachers each nominated a student to be recognized for his or her achievements in the Science Technology Engineering and Math fields, and Nodado selected Miao after working with her in Advanced Placement Chemistry last school year.

Read: All of the 2017 Students and Educators of the Month 

“I have a strong passion for the STEM fields, and having this award motivates me to continue pursuing my passion through my UCLA research and academic clubs such as Chemistry Club,” Miao said.

The winners were invited to the Lakers’ home game against the Washington Wizards on March 28. They were awarded a behind-the-scenes pass, were honored during a halftime presentation and received  plaques and  Lakers Student and Educator of the Month t-shirts.

Click here to view more photos of the event

“The event was really fun; we actually got to go on the court,” Miao said. “It was a great experience, and I even saw some Costa kids there.”

Currently, Nodado is a member of MBUSD’s Next Generation Science Standards Committee, which aims to change the district’s science departments in order to fulfill the new NGSS standards. At Costa, Miao participates in Science Olympiad, Math Club, and Chemistry Club. Miao is also currently conducting research on prion peptide sequences at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“I’m genuinely intrigued by the structures of these segments of protein, as no one has ever seen them before,” Miao said. “Because of it, I plan to continue through this summer and possibly even through the summer after senior year.”

Miao is currently continuing the project she started over the summer with UCLA assistant professor Jose Rodriguez and works with the computer program Python to aid in calculations to find motifs, modes and structure prediction of the protein. Miao spends four hours a day three days a week in the biochemistry labs and aims to solve the structures of extremely small protein segments using a new method that her mentor developed.

Learn more: Miao’s mentor Rodriguez and what he does 

“Through doing this biochem internship, I discovered that I would like to major in biochemistry rather than pure chemistry, which is what I originally thought I wanted to do before doing this internship,”  Miao said.

Miao plans on majoring in biochemistry in college and wishes to follow a similar path to Rodriguez, who makes biochemical advancements through regularly conducting research. The City of Hope Student of the Month award gives Miao motivation to work even harder in the STEM fields, Miao said.

“With huge advancements in technology and great strides in the fields of STEM, there lies the potential for subject areas from fields from chemistry to physics to biology to overlap,” Miao said. “I think interdisciplinary fields have potential to be the new future of STEM.”